Seeking health care

Re: Berating ailing patients is just cruel — Shawn Whatley, March 14

Dr. Shawn Whatley quotes an IPSOS poll that found that 42 per cent of Canadians would travel to the U.S. for health care if necessary. Responding to the poll, federal Health Minister Mark Holland scolded these 42 per cent, saying patients leaving lengthy waiting lists in Canada and travelling to the U.S. would “eviscerate the (Canadian) public system.”

In 2003, we founded Canada’s first medical brokerage organization. One of our first clients, a 66-year-old man from Newmarket, Ont., had a golf ball-size tumour on his brain. We arranged to have it surgically removed in the U.S. within weeks. His family doctor estimated it would have taken eight months to have the surgery in our public health-care system. To my knowledge, this didn’t eviscerate our system.

We once arranged a surgery for a seven-year-old girl from West Vancouver. She had been waiting for almost a year to have an infection drained from her ears. By the time her parents contacted us, the infection had crossed the barrier into her brain. The U.S. surgeon to whom we sent her was able to save her life (his words), but due to the delay for surgery in Canada, she lost all of the hearing in one ear, and half of the hearing in the other ear.

Again, no systemic evisceration. If this little girl had been the granddaughter of Health Minister Holland, I suspect he would have taken her to the U.S. for treatment — and shame on him if he didn’t.

Richard Baker, Vancouver, B.C.