Retired teacher Jo Danielson is living on the edge with an abdominal aneurysm, a dangerous bulge in her aorta, the largest single artery in the body. […] But she will have to wait until April, when the Vancouver IslandHealth Authority’s next budget year begins. The health authority has placed a cost-saving, yearly cap on the stent procedure because of the extra cost.
And that’s why our ailing political elites should be forced to choose between resignation or waiting anonymously for the same legislative cattle cars they’ve arranged for the rest of us. And why will that never happen?
Eric from Vancouver – “Our health is a political football, their health is IMPORTANT.”
That’s what happens when right wing governments cut health budgets, increase MSP fees and spend on 2 week parties. Isn’t this a standard right wing government approach to cut services and spend on cheer leading?
Does a $1B deficit and a dome stadium come to mind?
langmann:
Do me a favour. Read the article first. Then we’ll talk, ‘k?
“Retired teacher Jo Danielson is free to go to the US just as Danny Williams is. If she can’t afford it, that’s unfortunate, but there it is.”
That’s right. After all, that’s what Limbaugh said, right? Health care’s like anything else: if you can afford it, you live in a condo, if you can’t you live in a shack.
So what are you-all crying about?
Aaron, so very sorry to hear of you loss. My sympathy.
I would really like to know exactly what procedure Williams is having. We have excellent cardiac care facilities. The media is claiming ‘it is a specialised procedure that he couldn’t get in Canada.’
Really? I’m a tad skeptical on that.
Guess it went right over marquis’ head that the one of the strongest proponents for the messed up health care system, really isn’t satisfied with the system after all.
Williams is a hypocrite.
bluetech:
The article I referred to earlier noted that when McAllen, Texas acquired some new neonatal surgeons, babies that were dying previously now lived, because the surgeons knew new techniques.
I’m sure medicine, like any technology, is changing all the time and improving. But if you’re the typical doc working 8 hours a day, and on call nights and weekends, you might not have time to keep up on everything. So I don’t think it’s beyond the range of possibility that Williams really does have a unique problem, and the best method to treat it was created in the US, and hasn’t migrated to Canada yet (I mean, if someone was going to tinker with my ticker, I’d want the guy who’s done it a few more times, wouldn’t you?).
But given that Williams is such a gasbag, I’m skeptical too.
Listen up chumps and peAsants; you are worthless shite that I deign to help with my healthcare programs, and you make sure to be very happy to get them, or just watch out.
I, however, am an important person who’s very spittle you are not worthy to swallow, so I get any healthcare I can afford with your money, while you cannot. Do you see how unimportant you are? How necessary it is to vote for me next time?
Danny Williams
Florida
Quimby at February 2, 2010 9:30 PM
Right wing governments don’t insist on a monopoly of health care. They leave these decisions up to the people. Do you want the political state to decide if you get, oh, say, an operation for a hernia, or you decide if you need one, at your convenience?
When economic decisions and choices are surrendered to the state, those decisions become political, rather than economic. Health care is an economic decision. Hence the continual political battles about who gets what treatment.
Sorry, this is political micro-management of health care: every action of a nurse ultimately becomes political because she is working for political masters, not medical or economic ones..
Can I spell this out for you in yet another way?
Robert nails it.
If we asked for 10 bucks at the ER window we wouldn’t have the frequent flyers coming in for sneezes, tying up nurses,labs doctors and techs.
Taken further, there would be more funding available for important procedures.
If the likes of Prentce is too chicken to denounce AGW, what politician would be brave enough to introduce user fees?
Hence, two guilty parties: the people who depend on ‘free health care’ and abuse it, and the politicians.
Just watched CTV News with Robertson and the report filed, to no one’s surprise, didn’t reference Williams’ quote when he accused PMSH of being a threat to medicare. Didn’t see The National, so perhaps someone can inform me if it did.
What’s CTV’s excuse? The comment was never made by Williams? It’s not in their archives? His comments are not relevant to the issue?
I wonder how many times, if PMSH was the one to have flown off to the U.S. for priviate health care, references to him attacking Martin whose doctor runs private clinics would have been referenced? Probably would be run on a loop, every hour, for days if not weeks to come.
Another example of bias by omission from MSM, who seem to search for any clip or transcript containing quotes from PMSH that they feel they can use against him, pointing out that he misquoted somebody or took them out of context in some way, miststating their position. In this instance, not so much.
Seems to me that the narrative created from this point from Williams’ and his supporters in MSM will be to blame PMSH for forcing him to go state side.
Yes, I much prefer demand be decided by one’s need, not by one’s bank account balance.
It is better to wait for surgery then not be able to afford it.
The immovable truth is that healthcare is a limited supply, insatiable demand service.
And we do not value that which is free.
Politicians bribing us with our children’s income is old hat in sunny trudeaupia.
What is unexpected or ignored in the actuarial model is the dearth of offspring (dual income, “family planning” etc) to pay for it. As someone pointed out the 250,000+ imports per year (spoken as an import myself) may not be fully cost accounted for from a healthcare consumption perspective. The model collapses under its inherent design flaws. Unrestrained union greed is just the icing on the cake.
Here’s a thought (based on the last few commments). The PMO issues a press release stating that PMSH has gone to the US for emergency medical treatment that he couldn’t get here in Canada. Let the MSM have their fun for ONE 24 hour period and then Steve pops up fit as a fiddle and declares “well, public health care didn’t get any better but we just kicked the MSM right square in the cojones”.
On a more serious note, my mother was refused a stent based operation here in late 2002. This was a stent to cure a blockage, not reinforce a weak artery. The doctors she saw in Toronto General said it was too risky (she was 63 at the time and had had a triple bypass about 10 years earlier).
She was in Florida (with optional health insurance) in the winter of 2003 when she started having major problems. She ended up having surgery there – about $40K worth – after a young US doctor suggested that an operation was quite feasable.
She is still with us today. I am confident (was there when she was having the problems) that she would have passed years ago had she not had the operation.
Official Small Dead Brains position: It’s better to have no healthcare at all than to wait for it!
“What’s CTV’s excuse? The comment was never made by Williams? It’s not in their archives? His comments are not relevant to the issue?” – jon
Same thing on The National tonight. They covered it while managing to completely elide the actual *reason* that people are steamed: Williams’ sheer hypocrisy. And this afternoon Leslie Primeau, a Liberal-supporting, prog-friendly woman on a local radio station, professed non-comprehension and puzzlement at the nature of comments and the level of animosity shown toward Danny Williams by callers to Rob Breakenridge’s show earlier in the day; her take was essentially “who cares where he goes, it’s his choice.” She, too, completely missed the point: people are p***ed about the hypocrisy of big-wig politicians who fight valiantly – on behalf of “the people,” no less – to keep so-called two-tier medicine out of Canada, but then when they need care they just bypass the lineups they force everyone else into and go to private clinics in Canada or go abroad for private treatment.
A politician who believes that “two-tiered” for-profit care shouldn’t be allowed in Canada is entitled to his opinion, but if he uses private care himself all his future pronouncements on the dangers of “two tier” health care should be deemed worthless.
It’s like driving around in a Hummer commanding other people to stop driving because it’s bad for the environment, or decreeing “No one is allowed to eat meat” while you’re gorging on sirloin.
Commenters who say “It’s his choice, everyone should be free to….” etc are AGREEING with those who criticize Williams, but they’re entirely missing the – only – point: people like Williams and Chretien used their power to fight hard to make sure that private, “two-tier” care isn’t available to *other* Canadians, on the grounds that to allow it would be *dangerous* to our Canadian values.
Hypocrisy is the issue here, albeit the word doesn’t even begin to suffice when you consider what’s at stake.
If it’s illegal in Canada we can get what ever we want elsewhere. Personal liberty has gone global. Want a joint? … smoke it in a country thats it’s legal.
If it’s illegal in Canada we can get what ever we want elsewhere. Personal liberty has gone global. Want a joint? … smoke it in a country thats it’s legal.
I didn’t hit the button twice … twice.
“It is better to wait for surgery then not be able to afford it.”
Why? Either way you are DEAD!!!
“The Gordon Campbell “Liberals” are the most right wing government in Canada.”
Obviously you’re not a British Columbian, or if you are, you’re one of those whos is so far left that EVEN Gordon Campbell appears ‘right wing’.
Fact is, Campbell and Co. have lost their base – people like me who campaigned for them for two previous elections. For the first time in 40 years of voting, I wrote ‘none of the above’ in the last election and I wasn’t surprised that most other previous supporters did the same.
The B.C. Liberals are NDP Lite and may well go down to defeat in the next election.
That said, my 84 yr old mother just had a mastectomy in the Abbotsford Regional Hospital/Cancer Center and I can’t speak higly enough of both the facility and the staff. It likely does take a little longer for admission, but the quality of care (and her outcome) was above reproach.
I get really pissed off when people get upset about a system that claims to be able to meet a virtually unlimited demand for healthcare with a finite budget. I know math courses in school had been dumbed down but didn’t realize they had been reduced to a moron level; sorry what I meant to say was that more equitable standards had been put in place so that the numerically challenged did not bear the burden of failure and damage to their self esteem from learning material which was at its base the product of racist imperialist Eurocentric and sexist thinking.
Tommy Douglas, being a brainless statist ideologue probably hadn’t the slightest inkling that medical science would progress and that “fatal” diseases when medicare was introduced would become easily curable. The woman with the aneurysm probably wouldn’t have been diagnosed with 1960’s technology, and if she had been, she had a good chance of dying on the operating table thus achieving immense savings for the system. In the 1960’s she probably would have just dropped dead on the street and it would have been called “natural causes”.
When I was discussing the types of patients I had to deal with in hospital with a specialist friend of mine who went through med school 15 years before I did, he remarked “the patients on the medical ward that you’re dealing with now would have been in the ICU when I interned and the ones now in the ICU would have been dead back then”.
But not to worry, in BC one can get private alternative health care and I’m sure that there are numerous naturopaths out there salivating away the prospect of treating her aneurysm with chelation therapy and vitamin injections. This can probably be done for a mere $20,000 if one shops around. The record I’ve seen is a $50,000 bill racked up in a couple of weeks by a terminal cancer patient which seemed to be mainly for “natural” vitamin C infusions (none of that bad synthetic chemical vitamin C that those evil chemical companies put out).
That right wing government of moonbat Campbells ensures that not only are the naturopaths allowed to practice private medicine, but for cure of the abdominal aneurysm one can also see a reflexologist, iridologist, colon therapist (all human ills stem from the 50 lb of processed food that lines the colon) aura realignment specialist, acupuncturist, Jungian dream therapist, rebirthing specialist, homeopathist, the local shaman or that model for socialist medicine of the barefoot doctor needing only the little red book of mao’s thoughts to solve all human ills.
After finding out that the naturopath who charged $50,000 during the last few weeks of one of our patients lives then had the gall to tell the grieving relatives “you trusted conventional medicine for too long; if you’d come to me earlier I could have saved her” we were seriously thinking about ditching allopathic medicine and setting ourselves up as “alternative practitioners”. I could grow my hair long again, we could burn incense in the office, sell bongs at the front office desk, have cannabis vaporizers in the waiting room (can’t have hookah’s as smoking indoors is illegal in Vancvouer), and use machines of our own devising to diagnose ailments in people while charging them 10x what we made doing conventional medicine. Considering the vast number of worried well patients in Vancouver (who consider that wasting a doctors time for imaginary ailments is free but their colon therapy was worth every penny of the $500 they spent on it) we would be providing them far greater satisfaction than they got coming to our conventional medicine office and greatly augment our incomes. These are the patients who refuse to believe they have clinical depression and instead want to know how to change the color of their aura so that everything is blissful again or rant about the chemical pollutants and car exhaust that are aggrevating their chronic fatigue condition which make them incapable of working while reeking of cannabis smoke.
Aside from the fact that I’d have to be totally blitzed out to engage in this sort of fraud for any length of time the lawyers we talked to reminded us that actually having medical training would be a severe impediment to our proposed enterprise. So instead I moved to the interior where I practice real medicine and my partner retired.
The main reason that doctors aren’t up in arms about socialized medicine is that the doctor who comes in dead last in their medical class bills exactly the same as someone who was at the top of their class and decided to become a GP. If people were allowed to chose their doctors then, gasp, the good doctors would actually make a lot more money than those who people would avoid if they had any choice. I’m fed up with dealing with undiagnosed bipolars who are for worse on SSRI’s because some idiot walkin clinic GP spent 2 minutes on diagnosing a patient with depression and prescribing an SSRI. Every depressed patient should first be screened for bipolar disoder (bipolar 2 is 5% of the population) and an SSRI is the last thing these people need (unless it’s combined with a mood stabilizer). I’m tired of spending 20 minutes with now rapidly cycling bipolars to try to get them on mood stabilizers to undo the damage that the idiot who prescribed the SSRI in first place who is also billing 10X what I do for practicing bad medicine.
As far as I’m concerned private medicine can’t come to Canada soon enough. A good first step would be a widespread “no politicians, civil servents or union executive members” policy in doctors offices which is something we can do. Sorry about the rant; long day and it starts all over again tomorrow morning.
Funny how the politicians are such staunch defenders of our health care system right up until they have to use it.
Don Martin in the Herald today defending Williams.says he went to the States so that he wouldnt jump the queue in another province.
apparently hypocrisy is beyond Martin too.
“The Gordon Campbell “Liberals” are the most right wing government in Canada”
Was that comment some sort of attempt at a joke?
“It’s his choice, everyone should be free to….” etc are AGREEING with those who criticize Williams, but they’re entirely missing the – only – point
– EBD
Well, I’m one of them I guess, but I didn’t entirely miss any point, which was too obvious to re-iterate.
I was answering Kate’s ludicrous (and most likely unserious) notion that it should be a CRIMINAL OFFENSE for a politican to go stateside for health care on his own dime.
IF the public GETS the hypocrisy they’ll answer this at the ballot box. That’s the ONLY point. Don’t hold your breath!
We’re never given “that choice” at the ballot box. They refuse to even debate it. Haven’t you noticed? All of the parties fall all over each other defending “the system”.
So, yes, if our elected betters aren’t going to wait the wait, they should be ready to submit a resignation or face criminal charges.
There’s no choice at the ballot box because it’s a foregone conclusion that any candidacy advocating the abolition of the nationalized single-tier health care is doomed at the start.
Why no grassroots uprising like the American Tea Party Movement? Canadian statolatry I’m guessing.
There is a choice though: don’t vote or if you want to go through the charade, go to the poll and spoil a ballot.
And really, not long after the death of JD Salinger, citing the hyporcisy of politicans in so Holden Caulfield isn’t it?