Pregnant in Canada? Go the U.S.
May 14th, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |Last week the Globe and Mail reported that:
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). …
“Neonatologists are very stretched right now,” Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. “We’re so stretched, it’s kind of dangerous.”…
“We’re transferring babies across the province, in all directions, to try to find an extra bed for the next potential birth or for any baby already born,” Dr. Chessex said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. “We now have babies who have been transferred up to six times after leaving here before reaching home.”
Neonatal units in England are also struggling . Lesson: coverage is not care. That is, having medical insurance does not guarantee that you get medical care – especially if government provides the insurance. For more examples, see my article here.
(via FIRM , Health Care BS , and FreeMarketCure )
tags: coverage is not care, rationing, single payer, UK
