Tiredofthecrap first brought up the possibility that it was the Canadian National Health Care System that killed Natasha Richards and not the fall.
After doing some online detective work, here is what I found.
http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/03/natasha-richa-3.html
Entertainment Weekly did report a 45 minute delay because of the drive from Centre Hospitalier Laurentien to Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal
Richardson was later transferred to the Montreal trauma center Hopital du Sacre-Coeur. The ambulance carrying her arrived there less than 45 minutes after leaving the first hospital, at 6:38 p.m. The Globe and Mail reports that a neurologist on duty was overheard saying that Ms. Richardson's pupils were unresponsive, a sign of advanced brain damage. It is possible that had Richardson been transported by medical helicopter sooner, she might have survived.
There appears to be a great deal of discussion among medical personnel as to if her death could have been prevented.
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2009/03/natasha-richardson-medical-technology.html
The biggest loss of time was when the initial EMS response was declined, the fact that several hours passed before a CT scan was performed, and the delay before making the decision to transport her to a tertiary care center in Montreal. Those delays could conceivably happen in the United States as well.
There also appears to be a movement to silence discussion of that possibility.
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2009/03/leave-natasha-richardson-out-of-the-health-care-debate.html
I’m not advocating for or defending Canada’s single-payer health system. Merely, I ask that journalists considering doing this story to ask deeper questions that get beyond the anecdote. Consider asking about the trade-offs that go along with providing seemingly unlimited CT scans and helicopters. Ask what would happen if she were an uninsured U.S. resident.
The answer to the last question is that she would have had the CT Scan and her life might have been saved.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/waiting.room.death/index.html
ReplyDeleteLook around and you can find a lot of cases about delayed care in the US. This must be because government run this hospital right? Or maybe the hospital staff is all from Canada.
That's one of the dumber posts you've made. Anyone can find an article or story about something or someone who didn't do things the way they should have been. To be honest about a subject you need to look at the system as a whole. To pull out one bad example does not prove anything.
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ReplyDeleteOnce again I agree Pook but that wasn't the case you were laying out.
ReplyDeleteNo I can go dumber.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the system in other country's are crap. I agree!
I just think we can do better then what we are doing today. I think the current system needs to be tweak...
I can pull more bad examples =)
I was trying to say I don't think she died because of the Canada system itself.
ReplyDeletePook: I will grant you that she didn’t die because of the system itself. It is the consequences of the system that may have killed her.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the elder lady in England pulling her own teeth because she couldn’t find a national health care dentist to do it for her. The system provides for dentistry work to be done. It also removes all motivation to excel. Rationing isn’t part of any national health care system; it is one of the unintended consequences.
I know a doctor who dropped out of the Medicare program as a provider because the state would require him to prescribe heavy duty drugs to people who he knew were abusing them.
Obama doesn’t want to tweak our health care system, he wants to destroy it and build a new one in the image he wants it to be.
I agree with many others that our system could use improvement, but whenever I hear people mention the Canadian system I point them to this 2005 Canadian Supreme Court Opinion showing that the system is so poor that people are dying from lack of treatment while on waiting lists.
ReplyDeletehttp://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html
Also from the Court's opinion:
[I]t common knowledge that health care in Quebec is subject to waiting times, but a number of witnesses acknowledged that the demand for health care is potentially unlimited and that waiting lists are a more or
less implicit form of rationing .... Waiting lists are therefore real and intentional.