Canadian woman: If I had relied on my government for health care, I'd be dead

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Shona Holmes appears Friday at a Republican event on Capitol Hill.

Holmes, a 45-year-old mediator from Waterdown, Ont., has become a poster child for conservative opponents of health-care reform in the U.S. for her claims she would have died if she'd stayed in Canada for treatment of a brain tumour.

"If I had relied on my government for health care, I'd be dead," Holmes said in a television commercial for the anti-reform group Patients United Now.

In fact, Holmes didn't have a cancerous brain tumour, but a benign cyst that threatened her vision.

Nonetheless, she travelled to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, and spent US$97,000 for treatment rather than wait 36 days for insurance-paid care in Canada. She's now pushing for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan to reimburse her for the money she spent on surgery, tests and follow-up.

The organizers of the Capitol Hill event say she will be among several patients who will "share stories of overcoming life-threatening illnesses and explain their concerns about the president's plans for health-care reform."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianp...HKZZDxJ4yQC1XVA

[Chica Yeyé 41]

She chose to go to the Mayo. How is that Health Canada's fault??? wait, It is not.

[Tahoma 2,298]

I guess it wouldn't make any sense for "United Patients Now" to invite to their Capitol Hill event an American who died because they were denied treatment by their insurance company, or because they didn't have insurance in the first place.

[Joseph & Ana 0]

Its not as bad as Obama's "woman with a bad case of acne was delayed treatment" when it was actually skin cancer, morbid obesity, and heart problems that she never notified her insurance provider of. She did eventually get treatment though.