Nationalized health care is a dismal failure every time it is tried. Long waits, unmotivated personnel, shortages, poor equipment...it's all common.
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Their mother, Calgarian Karen Jepp, was transferred to Benefis Hospital in Montana last week when she began showing signs of going into labour, and no Canadian hospital had enough neonatal intensive-care beds for all four babies.
But when Jepp began experiencing labour symptoms last Friday, the unit at Foothills was over capacity with several unexpected pre-term births.
There was no room at any other Canadian neonatal intensive care unit, forcing CHR officials to look south of the border.
Jepp was transported to Benefis hospital in Great Falls last Friday -- making her the fifth Alberta woman to be transferred south of the border this year because of neonatal shortages in Calgary.
Dr. Tom Key, the Montana perinatologist who delivered the babies, described the decision to send Jepp outside of Calgary as "unselfish."
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?id=41ccae74-8325-449a-b89f-e68957ca25ae&k=79546&p=1
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number of pregnant women from Alberta are being sent to other cities to deliver their babies because of a lack of neonatal beds in Calgary.
At least five Alberta women with high-risk pregnancies have been transferred in recent days. Mandy Martin of Lethbridge, Alta., who is expecting triplets, was flown alone to Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on Feb. 5. Her husband Devin Martin, and her father flew in to be at her side Sunday.
The 23-year-old mother of two, who is in her 25th week of pregnancy, was transferred to the Ontario city so that doctors could closely monitor the developing fetuses when the Calgary Health Region couldn't find a vacant local neonatal bed.
Four other Alberta women were flown to Montana. Caroline Lupypciw, 20, gave birth to a girl in Great Falls, Mont., on Thursday. She and her baby flew home to Alberta on Saturday when a neonatal bed opened up for the newborn at Calgary's Rockyview General Hospital.
Alberta's booming economy has resulted in a population boom that has caught officials off guard. To make things worse, Calgary Health Region said there are no neonatal beds available in Western Canada.
"I wouldn't say I'm angry about everything, just disappointed in the system," Martin said.
In the past, B.C. doctors have flown local women who were about to deliver preemies to Edmonton or Seattle, Wash., because of a shortage of neonatal beds.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/02/11/calgary-babies.html
All too common with government run healthcare. Expect the same or worse if the US goes to the same system.
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The problems for Canada's sick people come from several fronts including lack of access to drugs, shortages of doctors and other healthcare professionals, and the elimination of hospital bed space.
Last summer in Newfoundland, the Minister of Health announced that that some health care facilities would be closing between May and September. These hospital bed closures were reportedly to "accommodate staff vacations". Ontario has a critical shortage of radiation therapy machines and technicians. This year, not a single new graduate qualified to be a radiation technologist. The one lone radiation clinic in all of Manitoba reported last summer a waiting list 371 names long. From April 1999 to July 2000, over 1,400 patients in Ontario were sent to the U.S. for treatment at a cost to Canadian taxpayers of $15,000 - $20,000 per patient. This was the reality of free Canadian health care.
As a cost containment measure, Ontario doctors are paid under "billing thresholds," meaning they are paid by the number of patients they see regardless of time spent or comprehensiveness of the care provided. If they hit the limit, they must send "overpayments" back to the government. In the first seven months of 1999, 251 Ontario physicians went over their limits and sent checks totaling $7.2 million back to the government.
There is currently a major battle raging between the provinces and the Canadian federal government -- the primary source of funds for Canada's national health plan.
In 1995, the Canadian feds cut the provincial health care budgets by $45 billion. In response, Ontario limited the number of enrollees to medical schools in an effort to cut costs. Combined with a burgeoning population, retirement of older doctors and a mass exodus of medical professionals to the United States, the province is now facing a perilous doctor shortage.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519173/posts
There are also as many MRI machines in Philadelphia as there are in all of Canada.