QUOTED: Toronto doctor Danielle Martin, after being asked if she knows how many Canadian patients die each year waiting for healthcare
QUOTED: Toronto doctor Danielle Martin, after being asked if she knows how many Canadian patients die each year waiting for healthcare
“I don’t, sir, but I know there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don’t have insurance at all.”
–Danielle Martin, vice president of medical affairs and health system solutions at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, speaking on Wednesday at a hearing organized by the U.S. senate’s subcommittee on primary health and aging. Her questioner is Richard Burr, a Republican senator from North Carolina. Throughout their exchange, Burr tries to bait Martin into revealing a downside to single-payer healthcare, the very notion of which is reviled by American conservatives, who have spent the past four years trying to quash president Obama’s Affordable Care Act. She doesn’t give him any satisfaction. A video clip is embedded above.
I’m a Canadian who was part of the “brain drain” and took a job in the US. Despite loving my job, I returned to Canada because of our health care system. It’s certainly far from perfect, but better than the nightmares I witnessed while there.
For one example, my colleague was bitten on his hand by poisonous spider which caused tissue necrosis.. Doctor’s wanted to treat the damage in a hyperbaric chamber but our health insurance refused to pay for it claiming the treatment was ‘experimental’. (This type of treatment has been available since 1662). Instead, the insurance company would only pay for his dominant hand to be amputated.
This is far from a horror story, but it’s my experience. I went to University in the states, and had the required medical insurance (as an International Student, it was mandatory.)
One morning, I woke up with that familiar scratchy feeling in my throat, yep, strep throat had struck me again. I went to the clinic, they asked if I wanted an instant strep test. Instant!? Wow, America is so fancy, sure. Strep confirmed, as I knew it would be, I waltzed out with my prescription. They literally had to stop me at the front door – you just need to settle up. Even with insurance, the fifteen minute appointment cost me just under $400 bucks. That instant strep test was an extra $100 – I blame my Canadian naiveté for not realizing that that would be extra.
Good for her! It is a relief to see somebody supporting our system instead of putting it down and whining about its’ flaws.
That sounds like hyperbole. Brown recluse spider bites, the most common type causing the tissue necrosis you describe, heal with or without hyperbaric chambers and rarely need amputation. Hyperbaric chambers might be available since 1662 but so has ‘blood letting’. Increased oxygen can help in diabetic foot ulcers and other tissue insults but spider bites in a non diabetic or patient with peripheral vascular disease eventually heal without ‘high tech’ treatment. Maybe your brain is drained?
Danielle Martin is fantastic! Very knowledgable and coherent answers to an obviously self-serving U.S. senator!
I am canadian…American health care sucks. If America didn’t spend 50% of it’s national budget on bombs and guns it could afford the needs of it’s people….just saying