Canadian Shares 4 Horrible Experiences with Canada's Supposedly Superior Gov't-Run Health Care
Imagine your wife is seven months pregnant, and she is feeling severe pain in her lower back on a Thursday afternoon.
It could be kidney stones, which have happened in the past, but it could also be a serious problem with the pregnancy.
You take her to the emergency room, but they can’t do the ultrasound right then and there.
The machine is also not available the next day — its schedule has already been filled up.
The wait stretches to Monday. Why? The ultrasound technicians have the weekend off, potential medical emergencies notwithstanding.
That sort of thing sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
The thing is, this really happened to French-Canadian entrepreneur Alain Lambert.
In a recent video for Prager University, Lambert related that story — one of four experiences that show how the Canadian health care system doesn’t match up with the hype it gets from liberal American politicians:
Lambert’s wife was lucky — the wait only involved discomfort from kidney stones.
Regular readers of The Western Journal know of a more tragic outcome from a wait for a diagnosis: Inez Rudderham.
Rudderham lived, but won’t be able to have children due to waiting for two years to have her cancer diagnosed.
But his wife’s wait is not the only bad experience Lambert can relate about the Canadian health care system.
Lambert also told the tale of a friend suffering from severe back pain who was put on a waiting list for surgery.
The pain got so bad that Lambert’s friend went to see a specialist, inquiring if the surgery could be done sooner.
“Are you suicidal?” the doctor asked.
“No, I’m not suicidal — I need a back operation!” Lambert’s friend replied.
“If you are not suicidal, it means you can handle the pain,” the specialist responded.
Lambert’s friend eventually flew to Florida and paid $20,000 to have the surgery.
Lambert went on to reveal two other experiences involving lengthy waits pertaining to cancer screenings.
In one instance, he was told he had polyps, and as he was being scheduled for a colonoscopy, he was asked if November was OK.
“Being used to long waiting times, I felt that was rather short,” Lambert said, recalling that he replied, “Great, that works for me.”
“Not this November,” the doctor’s secretary responded. “Next November.”
In another case, a friend of Lambert’s had to wait three months for the results of a biopsy to find out if he had cancer.
The test came back positive, but his friend was told he had to wait another three months for the procedure.
We know that waiting to treat cancer can be deadly.
Just ask Dr. Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute.
Last year, Pipes explained on Fox News how her mom, who thought she might have colon cancer, was told, “As a senior, we have too many younger people on the waiting list to get colonoscopies — people are waiting eight months to a year.”
Six months later, Pipes’ mom was rushed to the hospital, where she got the colonoscopy after a four-day wait.
She was suffering from metastasized colon cancer and died two weeks later.
Lambert does have some good news: “Canadian hospice care is first-rate — caring and compassionate. Once you’re terminal, they take very good care of you,” he said.
But wouldn’t it be better to cure the diseases that make hospice care necessary?
Sadly, it seems that many Canadians are more upset when Chick-Fil-A comes to Toronto than they are with the unnecessary death and suffering that health care rationing has inflicted on them.
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