Where will Canada send its preemies and other critical patients when we adopt their health care system?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.

Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

Canada's perfectly planned and cost-effective system had no room at the inn for Ava, who of necessity had to be sent across the border to a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital to suffer under our chaotic and costly system. She had no time to be put on a Canadian waiting list. She got the care she needed at an American hospital under a system President Obama has labeled "unsustainable."

Jim Hoft over at Gateway Pundit reports Ava's case is not unusual. He reports that Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit is closed to new admissions half the time. Special-needs infants are sent elsewhere and usually to the U.S.

In 2007, a Canadian woman gave birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets — Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia Jepps. They were born in the United States to Canadian parents because there was again no space available at any Canadian neonatal care unit. All they had was a wing and a prayer.

The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician flew from Calgary, a city of a million people, 325 miles to Benefit Hospital in Great Falls, Mont., a city of 56,000. The girls are doing fine, thanks to our system where care still trumps cost and where being without insurance does not mean being without care.

Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and a single-payer system is supposed to be better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

As she points out, in the U.S., low birth-weight babies are still babies. In Canada, Germany and Austria, a premature baby weighing less than 500 grams is not considered a living child and is not counted in such statistics. They're considered "unsalvageable" and therefore never alive.

Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world — until you factor in weight at birth, and then its rate is no better than in the U.S.

In other countries babies that survive less than 24 hours are also excluded and are classified as "stillborn." In the U.S. any infant that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth.

A child born in Hong Kong or Japan that lives less than a day is reported as a "miscarriage" and not counted. In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby is not counted as a baby if it is less than 30 centimeters in length.

In 2007, there were at least 40 mothers and their babies who were airlifted from British Columbia alone to the U.S. because Canadian hospitals didn't have room. It's worth noting that since 2000, 42 of the world's 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400g (0.9 pounds) were born in the U.S.

It must be embarrassing to Canada that a G-7 economy and a country of 30 million people can't offer the same level of health care as a town of just over 50,000 in rural Montana. Where will Canada send its preemies and other critical patients when we adopt their health care system?

As we have noted, in Canada roughly 900,000 patients of all ages are waiting for beds, according to the Fraser Institute. There are more than four times as many magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) units per capita in the U.S. as in Canada. We have twice as many CT scanners per capita.

Expensive? Wasteful. Just ask the Jepps or the parents of Ava Isabella Stinson.

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[almaty 19]

interesting article and i never knew the baby's weight was a variable

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

interesting article and i never knew the baby's weight was a variable

Me neither. Fascinating facts, brings all those 'rankings' into question.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Oh puhleeze. What's the message here? That the preemie would have died a preventable death were it not for the superior US health care system? Gimme a break already. The US comes in dead last in preventable death rankings among the 19 leading industrialized nations. We used to be #15 in the late 90's but have managed to fall to last place since. But we are way on top in terms of cost. What an accomplishment!

[NickD 202]

Where will Canada send its preemies and other critical patients when we adopt their health care system?

China?

[justashooter 430]

interesting article and i never knew the baby's weight was a variable

Me neither. Fascinating facts, brings all those 'rankings' into question.

"there's lies, damned lies, and statistics."

TR and WC both said it.

[Ban Hammer 12,845]

interesting article and i never knew the baby's weight was a variable

Me neither. Fascinating facts, brings all those 'rankings' into question.

very good question now that you've brought it up.

[Krikit 1,163]

From the hospitals I've been to here in the US (as a visitor), I can honestly say that I think they're fabulous. The story is rather bogus, though, because of course communities can't plan for unforseen circumstances when projecting and building healthcare facilities. The solution to send patients to the US is far more economical than building and maintaining additional facilities and staff which may only be in use a small percentage of the time. The cost is covered under the Canadian healthcare system, so it's not as if anyone's going to lose their homes or end up owing millions of dollars in order to save their loved ones.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

The solution to send patients to the US is far more economical than building and maintaining additional facilities and staff which may only be in use a small percentage of the time.

Good thing the 'wasteful' American system exists to absorb the occasional (and completely predictable) spikes in demand

[Peikko 1,575]

The solution to send patients to the US is far more economical than building and maintaining additional facilities and staff which may only be in use a small percentage of the time.

Good thing the 'wasteful' American system exists to absorb the occasional (and completely predictable) spikes in demand

Indeed! It's a puzzle why those Europeans/Canadians don't turn around and adopt an American system straight away, except of course they have been brain washed by all that socialism. Idiots!

[HAL 9000 96]

Can there be half and half? Socialist private systems?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Can there be half and half? Socialist private systems?

Actually, it might not be a bad idea to let some states go socialist and let some status stay free market. That way, when a preemie is born in a socialist state they can always be airlifted to Texas so they may live.

[HAL 9000 96]

That's right... because Socialists eat babies and kill the unborn.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

That's right... because Socialists eat babies and kill the unborn.

No, but they do let them die. That's what happens when keeping costs low becomes more important than actually delivering care. Introduce a government beancounter into life and death decisions and many will die.

[Peikko 1,575]

Right, because no one dies in the free market system, well, no one that matters anyway.