Friends of Medicare are no friends at all
Like many people my age, I have a senior parent who necessarily spends his retirement days in preoccupation with the healthcare system: What’s wrong with me? From whom will I ultimately receive care? Where do I go next — and especially — when will I get there?
After much pain and suffering, I can tell you that the Klassens are no Friends of Medicare, a group that would inexplicably rather see no one receive timely health care, than to have any lucky escapee pay for it elsewhere. See last week’s story of the Calgary woman and her doctor who flew to the Caribbean to get and give timely surgery — and the subsequent Friends of Medicare response.
It’s a mean fate these “Friends” decree for everyone in the compound; the restriction of personal rights they demand is astounding. These “Friends” would allow no Canadian to have any determination over what happens to their body, even on their own dime. Quality of life is to be left up to bureaucracy; “health care” involves taking one for the team. The “Friends” manifesto would now further control what legal activity physicians do in other countries on their own time at others’ expense, and if these rogues don’t do as the “Friends” cartel says, then they are to be exiled from the “system.”
Surely one doesn’t have to be a libertarian to see that this is health care by Alice in Wonderland.
My dad, who is no sissy, had a bulging disc in his back that required surgery. He spent his days prostrate on a blanket of his “floor-office,” complete with phone, bottle of water and notepad, pulled around the hardwood of his Ottawa condo by his cheer- ful godsend of a girlfriend.
With no appointment or procedure anywhere in the near future, he started to get creative. Chiropractor? Acupuncturist? Chinatown? One doctor told him calling an ambulance would get him a bed faster (it didn’t). Word had it that Quebec had physicians willing to inject something into the spine on demand — only for Quebecers, as it turned out.
Were the queues any shorter in Alberta, he asked me? The Crowsnest Pass? Where else do we have relatives? Wasn’t I once married to a doctor — couldn’t he pull some strings? (No!) No stone was left unturned.
At one point, he told me that if this is what the rest of his life would be like, he would rather die. Forget shark fin, if essence of horn from the last unicorn on Earth would have helped, I would have hunted it down and shorn it myself. It took a year and a half of excruciating pain for my dad to be cured the “friendly” way.
My dad doesn’t belong to the category described scornfully by the “Friends” as rich; he can’t jet set to lavish locations for new joints. His is a definite Plan C. After experiencing health care the Canadian way, my dad (and many Canadians) embraced “gringo medicine”: discount fares off season to Mexico, using local doctors in local facilities paid for by the peso. Current independent healthcare assessments put Mexico’s big cities on par with Germany (and even if they’re not, they’re better than no care). Even given the shorter lifespan of Mexicans, subtract the years he’s already lost in debilitating pain in our home and native land, and given that he’s not a drug runner, the land of the shaking earth comes out ahead in terms of his chances.
My dad ultimately did have a potentially catastrophic health event near Melaque, Mexico, where pods of not-wealthy Canadians have set up inexpensive retirement communities. Without giving you the gory details (though he would with great humour), his circumstances required him to be rushed first to a local doctor, and then to a neurologist in what turned out to be a spankingly modern hospital in Colima (pop 650,000), about two hours away. He got an MRI within hours, was diagnosed, and left, healthy and assured, 36 hours round trip. His parting gift was 16 huge negatives detailing every corner of his brain wrapped up in a cheerful cardboard carrying case to follow up with the Canadian neurologist he would never get to see. The bill was 6,000 pesos, about $540.
Canadians go elsewhere because they can’t get treatment here. Canadian doctors treat patients elsewhere because they can’t get OR time here. Canadian health care may be great in principle, but when you’re in need, the Friends of Medicare are no friends, indeed.