HOSPITAL BILL BLUES
David and Carol Williams work through their U.S. medical bills Friday at their Belle River home. David suffered a heart attack while in Florida and his insurer couldn’t find a hospital bed in Ontario. So far, he has an $864,000 bill from the Florida hospi
A Belle River man is back home safe and sound after racking up an $864,000 medical bill in Florida for emergency heart bypass surgery that followed frantic and stressful weeks in which his family tried unsuccessfully to find him a hospital bed in Ontario.
“We were told there were no beds available in Ontario,” David Williams said. “Our insurance company couldn’t get me home.” He and wife Carol are snowbirds, with a Tampa Bay trailer for winter stays, and they have travel insurance coverage. But their insurer wanted him back home for medical care and surgery following a Jan. 4 heart attack. After three weeks of lying in a hospital bed near Tampa, however, Williams said his American cardio doctor advised him he couldn’t wait any longer. “The surgeon said, ‘To heck with the insurance company, I’ll operate pro bono’ — he said he was prepared to do it for free.” Williams had double bypass surgery on Jan. 24. He was cleared to fly home on Feb. 12, accompanied by a nurse provided by his insurer. The retired Ford worker’s experience adds more fuel to the current political debate over a perceived shortage of intensive care beds in Ontario. Both the PC and NDP opposition parties raised questions at Queen’s Park this week over the case of Stuart Cline, 71, of London, who died in St. Catharines last week after being forced to wait five days in Mexico with a burst blood vessel before a hospital bed could be found for him in Ontario.
There have been other reports of Ontarian patients stranded abroad.
“This tragedy is the direct result of this government’s refusal to properly fund hospitals across this province,” Progressive Conservative interim leader Vic Fedeli said during Question Period on Monday.
Williams said he has no complaints about the “excellent” medical attention he received at Brandon Regional Hospital, located east of Tampa.
“The care in the United States was outstanding,” he said.
But it was also breathtakingly expensive.
With the last of the Florida medical bills delivered to the couple’s Belle River home this week, the grand total cost in America for David Williams’ heart attack is US$673,161.98 — almost $864,000 Cdn.
“I understand now why they (the insurer) didn’t want any operation in Florida,” said Williams. “When we see these bills, we see why they wanted us in Canada so badly.” Williams, who is 71, said he’s simply forwarding those bills to his insurance company, with whom he has “not as of yet” discussed the financial aspects of his ordeal. “I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of paying that,” he said. The insurance company has already contacted his Belle River family doctor, he added, “checking my (medical) history, seeing if I had any pre-existing condition.” Williams, who has an insurance plan that covers Ford workers and retirees, doesn’t give the impression he’s too worried about the massive U.S. medical bill. “I’m all better now and recovering, and I feel great,” he said. “My doctor here said it was probably a good thing I had surgery there. Here, I’d probably still be waiting.” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath continued the attack on the Liberals in the legislature on Thursday and again in Windsor on Friday. She relayed the experience of another Londoner, Joe Glowacki, who suffered a heart attack in Arizona and had to wait in a hospital there for three days until his insurance company had lined up a cardiologist at home.
But when he got back to Ontario, there was no bed available at the hospital, which, like those elsewhere in the province, has had to cope with higher admissions due to a particularly bad flu season. “And many more are in hallways or waiting rooms waiting for a bed,” Horwath said at Queen’s Park. “This isn’t a small glitch in the system, this is a symptom of decades of health-care cuts by consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments. It didn’t happen overnight.” Premier Kathleen Wynne, responding this week to the Cline case, agreed with Fedeli that “this was a tragedy ... that should not have arisen.”
But, she added, there were intensive-care hospital beds available in Ontario at the time, and she blamed a “disconnect” between the insurer and the health system. “The beds were there, there were vacancies, they were available, so why did that happen? I don’t have the answer,” Wynne said in Question Period. “This is not a disconnect — for the premier to blame this on the insurance companies, it’s scapegoating the issue,” MPP Taras Natyshak (NDP — Essex) told the Star. He described Ontario’s hospital overcrowding as “a crisis.” Natyshak said his office, which covers Belle River, worked with the Williams family in trying to secure an Ontario bed, and “we were under the impression when we last spoke that a bed was available.” But Williams said it was another of several disappointments, with the bed that was hoped for likely taken by another patient in need of urgent medical care. It was at that point that the heart specialist in Florida told him: “You need surgery.”
The worst part of being hospitalized and waiting for word to return home, said Williams, was the stress on his wife and family and days on end of not knowing what was happening, including the constant challenge of trying to reach the insurance company agents.
“Was it stressful? You should ask my wife that question. Was it ever,” he said.
“He called me once in the trailer and told me, ‘Carol, you’ve got to get me out of here,’ ” said his wife. Their daughters flew down on separate occasions to take care of their mother, who doesn’t drive, but there was always the chance of suddenly getting news of a bed in Ontario, so Carol always had to be prepared to leave.
The couple, who have three adult children, bought their trailer halfway down the Florida panhandle about a decade ago. This winter, they arrived on Dec. 28 and had planned to stay until April 4. They hope to return again next winter.
“I have no complaints about the Canadian system, but the problem is, you have to wait for everything,” said David. “When you’re away from home, it’s very stressful.” A spokesman for the Williams’ travel insurer, Allianz Global Assistance, told the Star it was merely a “third party administrator” for another insurer, Manulife, and could not comment on the case. A Manulife director told the Star in an email that the company has “a long-standing policy of not discussing individual customer situations.” The office manager for the heart surgeon in Florida said privacy laws prevented the doctor from commenting on the case. “Thankfully ... this turned out positively,” Natyshak said of Williams. “But it doesn’t negate the fact that, when an Ontario resident required health care, it wasn’t available.”
For David Williams, that care was available, but at a very steep cost.
The surgeon said, ‘To heck with the insurance company, I’ll operate pro bono’ — he said he was prepared to do it for free.