Canada Sending Pregnant Women to U.S. for Care

(Toronto) Almost continuously, advocates of socialized medicine in the U.S. point to the success of the Canadian health care system and, all the while, example after example of failures of the Canadian system are in the news. Here's something recent:

Toronto Star:

Another pregnant woman in Ontario was sent to the United States last week because there weren't enough intensive care beds for babies in the province, the Toronto Star has learned.

She is the third pregnant woman to be sent south of the border for care since April 1.

"She was only there two days, she didn't deliver and she was discharged home," said Wendi MacKay, communications specialist for the CritiCall Program, the emergency medical service that helps manage patient flow in Ontario. MacKay would not confirm the woman was sent to the U.S., citing privacy concerns, but a source familiar with the case said the woman was transferred stateside.

The woman was moved because she needed to be cared for in a hospital that also had a neo-natal intensive care bed, known as level 3 care, in case she delivered early. There was no room for her last week in hospitals in Toronto, London, Hamilton and Kingston offering that level of care. When medically necessary, CritiCall is authorized to access care outside the province.

The woman's transfer is a sign that a shortage of neo-natal intensive care beds in the province may be getting worse. From April 2004 to March this year, only two expectant women were sent to the U.S.

The phrase "no room for her last week in hospitals in Toronto, London, Hamilton and Kingston" is disturbing and probably an indication that the current system is already functioning at maximum capacity, i.e. no room for another baby. It's not exactly clear why there isn't public outrage. Sending patients to another facility is common and understandable. Sending patients to another country because there's "no room at the inn" means that the entire health care system is deficient.

I wonder if the Canadian taxpayers know that they are paying the bills for treating Canadians in the U.S. Nevertheless, when viewed in conjunction with a doctor shortage, a nurse shortage, and exorbitant waiting times, the fact that patients are now routinely sent out of the country for necessary treatment has to tarnish the brilliance of the utopian socialized medical care system in Canada.

Just as a reminder, the waiting times are so long that notifications for appointments are accompanied with computer-generated condolences to the family in the event the patient died while waiting.

In conclusion, people keep pointing to Canada and heralding the socialized health care system while failing to adequately expose its deficiencies. In total, it's not a utopian dream come true, it's a state-run bureaucracy constantly bandaging broken promises to a population that's less than the size of California's.

See also Socialized Medicine.