Canada’s Globe writes:
More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year – in what a doctors’ group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.
The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.
André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.
“Neonatologists are very stretched right now,” Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. “We’re so stretched, it’s kind of dangerous.”
…and this is the healthcare system some of our politicians want to move closer towards?
The full article can be found here. Link via Perry, who has more here.
I’m still overwhelmingly in favor of socialized medicine, but the Canadian implementation of it is starting to show its cracks.
Right now, the public and private sectors are pulling at it from all sides, and that’s leaving certain core practices - like the one you mention - in relative disarray. The conservative government wants to move towards more privatization, while most of the population thinks we should reinvest in / reinvent the public system and work on cutting costs and improving efficiency. We’re proud of our Medicare here.
Canadian healthcare is still relatively new…it’s like the USSR in the 1960’s…but with time, the weaknesses will show more and more. First its wait times, then its quality, now its service.
My prediction: this is just the beginning.
Time will tell if you’re right or wrong, though I obviously hope for the latter.
I live here and I admit that it has its share of problems, though I don’t think any of them are unsurmountable. Though I’ve complained at waiting weeks for ankle surgery, I know deep down inside that medical expertise is a finite resource that needs to be prioritized, and that per-severity healthcare - even when it’s slower than I’d like - is infinitely superior to no health care at all.
PS - In the ‘previous post’ link at the bottom, I read it quickly and thought it read “The Problem With Unicorns“. Now that would be a post worth reading!
Nobody in the United States has ‘no healthcare at all’. The poor, for example, have medicaid - government provided health care for the poor. Frankly, it has been my experience with medicaid that makes me strongly against any socialized healthcare system. And Canada’s healthcare system is starting to look more and more like it with each passing year…(government will always be government, in the end)
Other people in the United States may not have health insurance, but they all have healthcare, and the best healthcare in the world at that. Just ask the Canadians coming over.