Developments in this story from two weeks ago, via Mutt-Man;
Two weeks ago, we reported on the plight of Rev. Harry Lehotsky of Winnipeg who was suffering from abdominal pain and was told he had to wait five months for a barium x-ray and seven months for an appointment with a gastroenterologist (See ‘Health Care: Paying to be on a waiting list’).
According to the article in today’s Winnipeg Free Press (link available for a limited time), “…the minister was insistent they [the tests] be moved up”. The diagnosis? “…the ulcer doctors had been treating isn’t an ulcer at all. It’s pancreatic cancer. It has spread to his liver, spleen and lymph nodes. And it’s inoperable.” Doctors have given Rev. Lehotsky six weeks to nine months to live.
More about Rev. Lehotsky Dust My Broom
This is so sad – but inevitable. Any socialist system requires many more examples of this before any change is possible. In fact, it will have to reach epidemic (no pun intended) proportions before the national will to end (or at least change) this “universal (lack of) health care system” will be strong enough.
I don’t mean to offend any of Saskatchewan folks…But, I have always thought of Tommy Douglas as Canada’s Lenin. Or, maybe “Lenin-lite.” There are always a few common traits between such historical figures…
1) As youngsters, they suffer some sort of trauma that sets them on their political course (for Lenin, it was the execution of his brother for “conspiring” against the Tsar).
2) They believe that the proof that their point of view is correct comes from the fact that the “establishment” disagrees.
3) They lack the ability to forsee that the systems they are creating will be open to abuse by future generations who, because they grew up under the socialist system, have no reason to use the resource sparingly and, instead, have every reason to take it for granted and abuse it.
4) They disregard the fact that economic realities in the future are likely to change. After all, it always happens sometime after their death.
5) They assume that all humans are the same or, at the very least, that all people in the society will adjust their needs or wants to the same level (the lowest common denominator). They think that they can put humans into a mathematical formula.
6) Once their systems are adopted by a nation, many (ususally millions) must die before the people of that nation finally snap out of their insane “patriotic” hysteria in which they believe that, somehow, their country is defined by how a pap-smear is paid for.
If nothing else, these people serve as living symbols of that old axiom that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
My question is… How many people must be sentenced to die before we wake up and realize that things have got to change? I hope that Douglas is indeed Lenin-Lite and we don’t have to break reach death figures in the tens of millions before we start allowing alternatives. Shouldn’t human life (and the basic human instinct to survive) trump any form of political idealism?
I used to think that we, in North America were more advanced than those in other parts of the world because we were more pragmatic than idealistic. I never realized how wrong I was until this whole health care debate reached its recent levels.
How prophetic was the Rev. Lehotsky’s column on Sunday last. He writes that the outcome should be more important than the process–by dying he will prove that once again the process has become more important than the outcome for healthcare patients all across this country. Shame on all of us for allowing this to happen.
As an American speaking with Canadians about politics, current affairs, I’ve gotten used to hearing “But we have Healthcare!” from those of a leftist point of view.
But do you? Or do you have Rationed Access To Healthcare?
It would appear that for Rev. Lehotsky, his ration ran out before his life might have been saved by very early aggressive medical treatment.
(The sort of medical treatment that Canadians who can afford it come to the US to get when they don’t feel like waiting for months or years in Canada.)
Months later from the onset of symptoms, without treatment, Rev. Lehotsky’s prognosis is, very sadly to say, bleak.
Contrary to all the leftist histrionic mythology, American healthcare is alive and functioning very well, as evidenced by so many Canadians coming here for treatments, rather than the other way around.
The only people down here without coverage are the poor or “working poor” who, eligible for Medicaid low income healthcare coverage, don’t bother to apply and fill out a few forms.
Others have healthcare coverage via their employment; via Medicare for the retired; via (in my case and many others) via the Veteran’s Administration; or via Medicaid for the poor or “working poor” who are employed but don’t receive healthcare at their employment.
Even Britain, the first Anglophone democracy to institute socialized medicine, now allows a thriving private healthcare system in the UK, for those willing to pay for it.
So it wouldn’t necessarily be considered (GASP!) “American-like”, except by the bureaucrats, the unionized staff that have prospered with an overpaying, underserviced captive market. They and their friends in the Liberal Party and NDP could be counted upon for all the usual lies and distortions.
OK. Yes, yes, Rev. Lehotsky’s story is sad. And we all want shorter waiting lists. But, as anyone with half a brain knows, Doctors control the lists and if they feel someone needs a procedure faster they make them a priority and move them up. End of story. Maybe the better question is why Rev. Lehotsky’s doctor didn’t think he was serious enough to move up the list? Oh, and by the way, do you think a US HMO would give you faster access to these tests? Then go live there and find out.
Yes, a US HMO WOULD give you faster access to these tests. I’ve been an HMO member, as have a number of my relatives. (Two of whom needed quite a bit of sophisticated tests and treatments. From the day the needs became apparent, it was DAYS, or 1 WEEK or so, not weeks, not 5 to 7 months.)
Similar senario happened to my father-in-law a couple of years ago in Regina; Diagnosed with ulcers, put on a 6 month wait-list for diagnostics. A couple of months later he fell off his chair at the dinner table with a major seizure. His wife brought him to emerg again and he was discharged with a promise of a ct scan 5 months down the road. He died far short of this wait time with metastatic cancer (primary unknown). His son wonders if his dad would still be alive today if they had come to the coast for a second opinion, when the weird symptoms first occured 2 full years before his demise.
…one has to wonder how many other sad stories are out there.
So when does someone stand up and say the emperor of canadian medicare socialism has no clothes on?
If we ever want private health care, it’ll have to be a done by a province that wants it.
They’ll have to create demand.
And I don’t mean create demand by telling us doom and gloom stories about the impending demise of the public system. I don’t mean create demand by under-funding the public system and off-loading services to private insurance. They’ll never be able to convince us or cajole us into seeing that a consumer focused system is best for us. We need to see it for ourselves and not with horror stories.
Start by taking all the services that Albertans view as health care; chiropractic, dental, vision, prescription drugs, physiotherapy, midwifery, etc., and create a Schedule A of essential basic services from these health care items.
Make these Schedule A adjunct health care items payable with before tax dollars. This will make the purchasing of individual private health plans affordable, as opposed to making economic sense only through employers or individual incorporation.
When individuals can purchase health insurance with before tax dollars without the interference of employers you will see a myriad of innovative and personally-tailored products develop to fill this market. The consumer will be free to choose providers and plans that they want and costs will come down and quality will go up.
When people can compare the value they get from private adjunct health care for their extra-medical needs and the public health care system that provides their medical needs, there will be a clamoring to privatize medicine as well.
It will be the public that demands it.
The health care system is a disaster. I have been diagnosed with chronic obstructive sleep apnea, the kind that has killed people. It took three years to get into a sleep clinic to get this diagnosis. At that time they determined that I also had a deviated septum that aggravated the situation and made the effective use of a CPAP machine compromised. I was referred to an ENT surgeon who put me on a surgical waiting list as an urgent priority. That was two years ago. I recently went to my doctor and told him that I wanted a date for the surgery. In the absence of a firm date, I told him I wanted a referral to a US facility to perform the necessary surgery. Enough said. Amazingly, by taking control of my own treatment and electing this I am in violation of the Canada Heath Act. What a crazy system.
The left especially has us trapped in this endless loop discussing the merits of our Health Care System while totally vilifying any attempts to affect some desparately needed change.
NOTHING will improve until that mindset can be altered.
Thank God for the USA to the south of us. At least if we have any money left over after paying all our taxes we can choose to use it to pay for personal healthcare — a decision and choice that the socialists who run this country would gladly deprive us of.
“Oh, and by the way, do you think a US HMO would give you faster access to these tests?”
The short answer is “yes”.
I have a Canadian friend in the US who went for a checkup. The doctor decided to take an Xray. The results were “in” and on my friend’s answering machine when he got home from work that day.
Meanwhile, another friend of mine, in Canada, waited for four months for a specialist to review a set of Xrays that had been taken earlier.
My Canadian friend is alive today because he was working in the US.
God Bless Rev. Lehotsky.
Advocates of reform to health care [a combination of private and public] are up against the most nefarious bootlickers known to the planet. The identity politics played by those in Canada willing to block access to private care will be impossible to placate. Please don’t let PMSH fet comfortable with the silly “wait time guarantee” policy. Honestly, George Orwell would cringe at the language of incremental change that will put far more Canadians in harm’s way than the Afghanistan mission. Open up the health care system immediately to private care. Re-write the Canada Health act by the end of the year and get Canada’s largest insurance companies merged into the current regime. Actually, this reform will need a province [Alberta] to pioneer the system much like Saskatchewan did so long ago.
Oh, and my friend in Canada is currently just past the one-year point of a two-year wait to see a specialist about a painful medical condition.
About 98% of Canadians know nothing about the US Healthcare system but they sure know what they don’t like! Believe Richard Ball’s post. It works in the States; it’s user friendly and I recommend it to Canada. Why can’t NAFTA be expanded to include health care? American’s drive Canadian made Honda’s and Toyota’s and so why can’t Canadians test drive US Health Care when they need it?
Althought i think the Government is doing well, on this issue they are out to lunch.
This disgraceful excuse called “health Care” can be put right in a few days if the government has the will.
There are more options than private vs public care.
I am willing to bet that the barium test could have been done within a day. Many of my family and friends live in Northern Ontario and when necessary, are treated in Winnipeg. Their treatment has always been timely, effective, and thankfully, successful.
Heres what needs to happen.
Find out who made the decision that dictated that Rev. Lahotsky could wait for tests, and take that person out of the health care system permanently immediately. If its a union person, too dam bad, let the union scream. If its a doctor, same treatment. We have to stop accepting the dictates of these stupid, stupid people who condemn the citizens of Canada to death. Unless and until someone can tell me that there wasnt an hour to spare in all the X-ray departments in the province, I will believe that this could have been done in a timely fashion.
“Oh, and by the way, do you think a US HMO would give you faster access to these tests?”
Speaking as a Canuck working in Texas the answer is YES! Is it more expensive… probably with copayments [office visit costs me $25] but then again I see very few people with colds waiting in the ER. A previous commenter mentioned about Canadians growing up expecting their entitlement and abusing it. I remember in Alberta, just before the NEP, the government would send you an annual statement saying something like “This is what Alberta Healthcare paid out for health services on your behalf”. I understand that that got tossed because it made some people felt picked on or something. Pity.
I’ll say the same thing I’ve said before: Canada, go out and see what the rest of the world, besides North Korea and Cuba, do for healthcare and create something that encompasses the best of everything. Hey, you don’t even have to look at the evil American Way if you don’t want to.
Oh shit.
I went to college with Harry, back in the late 70s. He and I recently e-mailed each other about his problem with the crappy service he had to deal with from Manitoba Health.
Oh shit.
Speaking about Tommy’s legacy {ptweie}, has there been a followup on the Saskatchewan girl who had to go to Edmonton?
“Doctors control the lists and if they feel someone needs a procedure faster they make them a priority and move them up”
David, I don’t know what world you live in but it’s not Ontario. Doctors here can be fined up to $10,0000 for attempting to “move a patient up the list”. The government calls it queue jumping and will fine physicians who attempt to leverage a spot for their patients.
Even if they weren’t afraid of of the consequences, the wait lists are so jam packed here that you simply can’t move a patient up.
The little crowd of supporters, who seem to be animated more by faith than reason, surrounding this post remind me of true believers. They will inch up the stairs to the Church one step at a time mumbling stories of the Saints or Brother Andre or the like, and how so and so threw his crutches away just like that. Whatever moves them, I wonder. It sure as hell is not practical fact.
And the author’s spit ball fired at the ghost of a pretty good man is just plain petty. A bad day in the land of the knuckle draggers, I guess.
Out here in B.C., i believe our health care problems have been solved.
I understand that the nurses union has settled and now make 90,000/yr
As long as we all recognize that this is an ideological debate here, as all the comments against me have been from private health true believers, then that’s OK. I can deal with it if you all can. But let’s be clear, doctors across the country MOVE PEOPLE UP WAIT LISTS EVERY DAY depending on their opinion of the urgency and need. Anyone who thinks someone whose doctor thinks they may have prostate cancer goes in a list for a diagnostic behind a garden variety exploratory is on crack. (But I’m willing to accept you may have had an experience with someone who is a really crappy, useless doctor who can’t do anything for you and blames “the system” for everything.) Even the HMO defenders seemed to indicate it depended on their doctors’ vigilance in stressing the need for quick turnaround. I have lived in several provinces. And when my son’s doctor said he needed an MRI (not in my current province) a while back, he got it within days. This was to explore a very speculatative possibility of some earlier tests. No muss. No fuss. You guys want to defend the U.S. system where tens of millions have no health insurance whatsoever. Be my guest.
Pancreatic cancer is usually discovered ‘ too late’ to do anything about, and even if found early, is nearly almost fatal – i think the 5 year survival rate is 2 % or something.
My brother was tested for 3/4/5 months, all sorts of tests, before the docs found the problem, pancreatic cancer; should they have found it earlier, maybe, but his symptoms suggested other, more common, causes, which is where they looked; finally, last test…you know the answer.
Other than a resection, a brutal operation with a poor success rate, there is little that can be done with pancreatic cancer, and it must be caught early for a resection.
So my brother has had chemo, which has destroyed the quality of the last few months of his life, when he might otherwise have accepted his fate and lived a last dream or two.
With what i know now, my suggestion for the good Rev., is, get an ample supply of morphine from the palliative folks, both pills and liquid, have them ready to give you a morphine self administered body pump when required, do not take any chemo or other therapy, and go and live the last few months of your life as you choose.
Would someone please get my suggestion to the Rev.
My brother, a dear man, will leave us very soon -a day or two, maybe a week.
I do not blame the docs for missing the diagnosis for months, for the results would likely have been the same, but i am angry that they encouraged him to take the chemo, which destroyed the few good months he had left, for the possibility of a few more months of life.
The palliative care system, here in Ontario, has worked wonderfully.
Let me add, my brother, on getting the diagnosis from his Ontario docters, went down to a well know cancer clinic, in Cleveland i think, and came back saying that he had much more confidence in his Ontario doctors.
You know, if wait lists are the problem, why doesn’t the government take some of the healthcare money and spend it on clearing up the wait lists by sending waiting patients to the US or some other place that has openings? People could get diagnosed quicker, back to full productivity, and increase the tax base. Simple.
I thought MPs have a special bypass the system que jumping mechanism in place. maybe one of their lordships could step aside or que a constituant in.
Im waiting for a “tearful “Svend to announce he is dying of some disease and champion the health care system. or a “feisty” Hedy to denounce the current system her ex-government worked so hard to built. or an “incested”Jack Layton to babble on about anything at all.
CanRev-
Bill Vander Zalm did exactly that during his time as Premier, sending patients to the US for heart surgery & radiation treatment.