Rationed health care brings rare identical quads to US hospital
AP/NY Times:
Don Surber notes they were not flown to Cuba.
The BBC story reveals that no hospitals in Canada could handle the births so they found facilities in a small community in Montana. That is what you get with rationed health care.
A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, officials at a Great Falls hospital said Thursday. Karen Jepp of Calgary, Alberta, delivered Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia by Caesarian section Sunday afternoon at Benefis Healthcare, said Amy Astin, the hospital's director of community and government relations.Got that Michael Moore and Hillary. In a growing American city where the free market is allowed to work there would be no trouble getting hospital beds for a growing population. But, in Canada with rationed health care, you can't even get in for an emergency delivery of babies. Congratulations to the Jepps and boos for Canadian socialized medicine.
The four girls were breathing without ventilators and listed in good condition Thursday, she said.
''These babies are doing grand,'' said Dr. Tom Key of Great Falls, the perinatologist who delivered the girls.
The babies were born about two months early and were conceived without fertility drugs, he said. They weighed between 2.6 pounds and 2.15 pounds.
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''This is a very big medical event,'' he said. ''Identical quadruplets are extremely rare.''
Medical literature indicates there are less than 50 sets of identical quadruplets, said Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the NYU Fertility Center in New York.
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The Jepps drove 325 miles to Great Falls for the births because hospitals in Calgary were at capacity, Key said.
''The difficulty is that Calgary continues to grow at such a rapid rate. ... The population has increased a lot faster than the number of hospital beds,'' he said. (Emphasis added.)
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Don Surber notes they were not flown to Cuba.
The BBC story reveals that no hospitals in Canada could handle the births so they found facilities in a small community in Montana. That is what you get with rationed health care.
The story says "But when Jepp began experiencing labour symptoms last Friday, the unit at Foothills was over capacity with several unexpected pre-term births." That was on top of the "one in 13 million" event of having the quadruplets in the first place. The implication is that if it hadn't been for those unexpected pre-term births, they'd have had room for them there. If they didn't have room in the first place the flight to Montana wouldn't have come as a surprise, they'd have been planning for it all along.
ReplyDeleteLook at a map, and you'll see that there aren't a lot of big cities in that area, in Canada or in the states. If the "several unexpected pre-term births" had happened to be in Great Falls rather than Calgary, you would have been denied your snark because the quadruplets would have been delivered in Calgary.
You remark: "In a growing American city where the free market is allowed to work there would be no trouble getting hospital beds for a growing population."
But you know, at least deep down, that this isn't the problem here. The problem wasn't "hospital beds for a growing population." The problem was a small-city hospital suddenly needing intensive care facilities for six or more (four plus the "several unexpected") premature infants, a level of demand for that specialized care that far exceeded expected levels of demand for a city of that size. Just the quadruplets themselves were a "one in 13 million" event.
Have you ever had a close friend or relative who was uninsured, and had significant medical needs? Seen their retirement savings bled dry because of it, or seen them, faced with that choice and what it would mean to their spouse and family, forego treatment that you (or a Canadian) would readily get via your health insurance?
If you read the other links you find that there were not adequate facilities in any hospital in Canada. This happens because of rationed health care. As for the relative size of the cities, Calgary has a population of around one million and Great Falls has a population of around 56,000.
ReplyDeleteThe uninsured in this country are not without health care. That is a liberal myth.
Second that. Not that (from the BBC article) Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada but none had space.
ReplyDeleteEither there was a HUGE number of sick babies born or "it was a small hospital overwhelmed" is an attempt to misdirect attention to one hospital, rather than the system.
(my sister used to work in a medical facility in a border town. Half of their business was cash customers from Cananda. Obviously, I cannot document that, but this story does lend the concept of better care for cash - in another country - credibility)