As the Obama Adminstration begins exploring how to reform America’s broken health care finance system, Kevin Pho makes an insightful observation regarding the current medical treatment of one of the leading reformers:
As we know, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has an advanced stage brain tumor, and was recently hospitalized for a seizure.
Seizures are a common side effect of malignant brain tumors, and often controlled with a variety of anti-seizure medications. There will be times where seizures can break through medication control, leading to the frightening episode that occurred on Inauguration Day.
Family physician Doug Farrago asks some pointed questions about the stellar care that the Senator receives, observing that "he travels around with a team of physicians," and, "most patients in [Senator Kennedy’s condition] usually are in hospice care."
Senator Kennedy should be commended for his efforts to bring about health care reform. But is the care he is receiving, including instant opinions and access from revered institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital and Duke University Medical Center, representative of the kind of care he’s advocating for the American public?
It sounds to me like it’s exactly the sort of care he’s advocating for the American public.
Mamacita, the difference is that Kennedy can actually obtain such level of care and pay for it. Simply advocating it for the American public doesn’t achieve either of those requirements.
The following comment was emailed in to HCT by longtime HCT reader, Mary Morrison:
My mother lives in Canada so I have first-hand experience with govt. health care. In some cases it is wonderful. Mother tore up her forearm & required a skin graft. She had excellent care, including daily home visits from nurses after she was released from the hospital.
A year ago Thanksgiving Mother fell & broke her hip. Pins were surgically inserted & she was walking well. However, after 7 days the hip totally disintegrated around the pins. So a 92-year-old woman was sent home from the hospital unable to walk at step to wait for a hip replacement. Under Canadian govt health care the replacement of a distintegrated hip is deemed elective surgery. She had to wait 5 months.
At the same time that Sen Kennedy was diagnosed with his brain tumor, a Canadian had a similar seizure. His doc wanted to get him an MRI but there is about a 6-months waiting list. So the patient crossed the border & immediately was able to have an MRI in the U.S. The MRI showed an aggressive brain tumor. With the MRI results in hand, the patient & his Canadian doc tried to arrange brain surgery in Canada. Again it was to be a wait of many months. The patient again crossed the border & promptly got surgery in the U.S.
Another story in the Canadian papers while I was taking care of my mother told of a woman whose mother was terminally ill with cancer. The mother lived in Alberta so the daughter brought her to Vancouver to live near her. Beore you can get treatment in Canada one must have a primary care physician. The daughter, a lawyer, tried to get her mother in to see her own physician. Because physician reimbursement rates are so low & because terminal care patients require more care, the doc would not accept her. So the daughter quit her doc in disgust & searched for a primary care physician. Her mother was refused by 28 different physicians & died without ever finding one.
Canada is a big country & medical facilities are centered in the large cities of Vancouver, Montreal & Toronto. I would guess that Ottawa facilities are also good because that is the capital & politicians always come out on top. But if you don’t happen to live in those cities, care is problematical. For example, let’s say you live in the maritime provice of Nova Scotia & your wife has a lump on her breast. She must fly to Montreal for a biopsy & if you want to stand by her, you need to pay airfare too, plus hotel, cabs etc. Nova Scotia is a long way from Montreal. It would be like having to go from West Texas to Chicago for a biopsy.
Health care is always rationed — by cost or by simple availability. Just announcing that health care will be “free” to Americans does not change that. When a person abandons his fate to the government, he may get hamburger or he may get dog food. But he certainly won’t get steak.
Mary Morrison