printThe excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid,” now on Taki’s Magazine:
“Code Blue Intensive Care Unit,” “Code Blue Intensive Care Unit”:
When the Code-Blue alarm sounded over the hospital’s loudspeaker system, my husband and I knew it sounded for our daughter. It was 11:00 at night. The hallways of the British Columbia hospital were dark. Only one emergency operating theater was in use. She was in it. The skeletal staff came running. Resuscitation carts were rushed toward the theater.
My own heart nearly stopped, because she is my heart.
To follow Dr. David Gratzer’s plainspoken definition (the good doctor is a Canada-care whistle blower), Code Blue is “the term used when a patient’s heart stops and hospital staff must leap into action to save him.” My then 12-year-old had stopped breathing on the operating table and was being revived. …
A cursory investigation into why [my daughter] coded that night was conducted. The findings were, conveniently, inconclusive. …
If you want to understand why the “subpar care Nicky had received” was just “a day in the life of a patient interned in a state-run health care system,” read the complete column, “Code Blue,” now on Taki’s Magazine. That’s where you can catch the weekly fare every Saturday.
Update I (July 31): The child can take pain. As a child, she suffered from severe asthma, which runs in the family (a great uncle died during an attack). My child’s heroic stoic composure during some of the procedures she endured in the course of this deadly disease—I cannot praise enough.
Update II: Readers: please make a habit of posting your comments to the blog, rather than sending them to me. I cannot answer all letters (although I try). Besides which other BAB posters here will often respond eloquently to your questions about liberty.
Rebutting those who say that my experience is typical of private establishments as well lies in advancing rights-based and utilitarian/economic arguments—you must address natural rights, and the structure of incentives in socialized systems. I speak to those issue in my work, regularly; have for years. But I also explain in the current column why this episode is certainly par for the course in the sphere of the “public option.”
Please check out the Articles Archive under socialized medicine and natural rights. The Barely A Blog archive (search “Socialism,” “Regulations,” and “Health & Fitness”) is a good source too, as we’ve conducted extensive debates on this lively forum.
I’m afraid that defending liberty demands the STUDY of—and familiarity with—principles. In other words, some work, a mental effort. Quick answers won’t replace the work liberty’s defenders must do. All too often readers demand quickies. Intellectual sloth extends to not even searching my accessible web and blog databases.
Begin by signing up for the Mercer Weekly Newsletter.
God Almighty, that’s a disturbing story; I’m sorry you had that experience. Thank God she’s all right, but that presents a very frightening future for some in the medical field.
After reading your story ( as bad as your daughter was treated,she was fortunate, in that it did turn out with a worse outcome ) I can not fathom any logic or reasonable argument that we in the US would give up the kind of medical care we have available now , and institute a Canadian , European or other socialistic medical care.
No matter how well intentioned people might be ,every person on earth can not have everything provided to them from cradle to grave for free or at less cost than it takes to provide a service or commodity, that my friends is unsustainable.
Brilliant article. I’ll be pointing people to it so they might understand the way bureaucracy affects people on a personal level.
–John–
Much, if not all of the argumentation against Canadian-style health care I’ve seen consists of personal anecdotes. I’m quite sure we could find a long collection of scary anecdotes highlighting the murderous callousness American ‘Big health’ can so often display. How about some discussion of the crushing costs of health care, both private and government-run, on the American economy, especially when considering the results ?
Emergency rooms vary in America, emergency care being the closet thing we have to socialized medicine. A federal law called EMTALA requires all hospitals that accept Medicare to examine and stabilize anyone who requests treatment. Your experience will depend upon the demographics of the area that the hospital serves and the time that you arrive.
I remember waiting endless hours at a Chicago emergency room to have my broken arm set as a kid, even before EMTALA. A couple of years ago, I received very prompt and courteous treatment at an emergency room in north San Antonio after falling off a horse. Of course, it was early on a Saturday morning. Saturday night might have been different.
I was shocked, however, by the $1100 out-of-network bill for the ten minute ambulance ride. I could have bought a first class, round trip ticket to Paris for that! There are two things I’ll never do again: ride someone else’s horse and voluntarily get into an ambulance.
A stellar example of the difference in preaching and testimony.
In 1949, when I was nine, I too broke an arm, private doctor, hospital, home in three days, no complications, no insurance, blue collar father, we paid it off out of savings and/or payments without complaint. 1983, granddaughter (age five) fell in hall, greenstick fracture of her left arm. We took her to the Emergency room, within four hours her arm was wrapped and released. Bill around $500, I had a white collar job, blue collar paycheck. We made payments til it was paid. So, I have a problem understanding why we need Obamacare. Also, I’m appalled, Heroin administered to a twelve year old. That stuff was dangerous to Viet Nam vets, what were they thinking? Back to your daughter- If she could go through all that without screaming, she is to be commended. My hat’s off to her.
Ilana, I’m humbly requesting permission to translate portions of this for my Serbian readers, as I’ve been asked about Obamacare and this would explain it better than anything I might say.
[Sure; translate the entire thing if you like, N.]
I read your “Code Blue” and could sense the anxiety in your description of events.Any parent can relate to that. This should be a warning to America. The single payer, government does all philosophy , has ruined health care in Canada, South Africa, and who knows where else. I fear for “ObamaCare” in the USA and the provisions in the health care Proposals emerging from Washington.
The written media, TV and even talk radio has not been comprehensive in explaining all the radical provisions.
I wonder if the people of Canada realize that a mistake was made by the Government of Canada by having a single payer system. I wonder if the system in use in Canada was debated by the Canadian citizens before it was voted into law in Ottawa.
I wish your daughter well.
Sid Krimsky
In a moment of pessimism — or, was it realism?– I imagined getting a letter from a future “Office of Health Care Resource Conservation,” advising me that I was invited to attend a meeting at which the burden of my health problems on the health care system would be lifted, permanently.
Please read it on my blog, at
http://tomcox.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/obamas-health-care-memo-to-boomers-do-the-right-thing-die/
Bets Wishes for Continued Good Health,
Tom Cox
RE: Update (July 31) — No asthmatic should fail to learn and practice the breathing technique of “diaphragmatic, pursed-lipped breathing.” Load that phrase into a search engine for details, or ask a competent respiratory therapist.
Not only a well written narrative of a harrowing experience, but good material (in my judgment) for Congressional testimony.
Summary: Toronto. Broken leg – shattered tibia and fibia. Saturday 9 AM. November 1995. Winter. Nurse in emergency wanted to pull off winter boot of broken leg. Patient (me) insisted the boot be cut off and I would authorize that in writing if necessary. Emergency room of downtown hospital had no splints or braces. Roumanian immigrant sweeping the floor was a qualified physician who could not get approved in Canada. When he saw no one was helping me and my leg was hanging apart, he came over, at the risk of his job, and personally rigged up a brace with materials at hand, so I could lie on the gurney properly without doing further damage. I didn’t see a doctor or get x-rays for hours, and again, surgery was immediately necessary. Later, I was put in a room with four senior women on a chronic care ward, even though I had special insurance for a dual shared room through my husband’s work policy. The women had dementia and were screaming constantly. Canadian healthcare? It’s the Twilight Zone.
[Thanks for sharing—especially important is your point about the impediments placed, usually by unions, on qualified individuals entering the profession. I mentioned this too in the column apropos the Old South Africa.]
You are luckier than you know! Not only could the over medication of morphine caused the child to stop breathing, which with a competent anesthesiologist can correct before harm is done, it could have been much worse. With a comminuted fracture of this type the bone can cut through the Ulnar artery or vein and cause blood loss to the limb or even clots to the lungs which would have killed your child. Who ever assessed the child was wholly incompetent and bless the surgeon who fixed the problem. I have worked as an investigator in the legal/med field a long time and have seen much more tragic results. As you say, it will become a million times worse with the inception of Obamacare and more bureaucrats , yours, Scott
[Am I glad I did not know this!]
Your well-written article reminds me how much MORE important our loved ones are than political stuff. I constantly oscillate between wanting to HUG my Anna and wanting to SLUG my Anna. One reaction after reading your touching story is “That’ll teach Nicky to study next time!”.
Our children are so so so much more important to us than to an overworked (even if competent) physician, hassled nurses, ignorant orderlies, callous insurance bureaucrats, billing clerks, lobbyists, staffers, government automatons, and corrupt politicians that it is truly shocking that people would even consider leaving the care of their most precious loved ones in the hands of complete strangers. Life issues are even more personal than decisions on education (moral and secular) which are also highly personal and SHOULD involve parents of the young, children of the old, spouses, etc. rather than rules, bureaucrats, etc.
I can understand something like a road network being done by some faceless government or corporation (OK – the libertarians can excommunicate me) and there is nothing all that personal about building an aircraft carrier. But how can a “free people” willingly abdicate personal responsibility for the care of their loved ones?
[Funny how it takes a lot to get you and me “emotional,” but this kind of thing can. I did not even want to write about it, but Sean urged me to. He says it speaks to people more than analytical data (which follows).]
The biggest problem with your narrative about your daughter’s treatment in that this is the way governments operate. Those who cuss the insurance companies and doctors should stop to think what it will be like when we are nothing but sheep to be herded and then discarded by some civil service clerk who looks at your brain tumor as something that’s interfering with their morning coffee break. If people have their panties in a wad about the incredible cost of health care perhaps they need to start figuring out a way the break the hold of the legal profession on the practice of medicine. If your doctor wasn’t paying thousands of dollars for malpractice insurance maybe everything wouldn’t cost so much. Now we have expensive health care. Under the government’s marxist health care plan we won’t have any health care. Wake up out there. The government is NOT your friend.
James Huggins..