Congratulations, it's a ...cross-border incident! [Mark Steyn]
Somewhere in America Alone, I cite an example of the logical reductio of socialized health care: "the ten-month wait for the maternity ward". I've been adding to the file ever since. Here's the latest entry, from Hamilton, Ontario:
Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.
A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.
Well, it would be unreasonable to expect Hamilton, a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada's largest city (Greater Toronto Area, five-and-a-half million) in the most densely populated part of Canada's most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people) to be able to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half-a-century.
But wait! The fun and games are only just beginning. When a decrepit and incompetent Canadian health bureaucracy meets a boneheaded and inhuman American border "security" bureaucracy, you'll be getting a birth experience you'll treasure forever:
Her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, couldn't follow their baby because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States. They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.
Once Buffalo enjoys the benefits of Hamilton-level health care, I wonder where Ontario will be shipping the preemies to. Costa Rica?
e my post below on the Hamilton (Ontario) newborn currently in a Buffalo (New York) hospital, a reader from Pennsburg, Pa writes:
ROFLMAO!!
You guys are hysterical....bitching about Hamilton and Buffalo.
I've got a friend who's a cop near Pittsburgh. He hasn't seen a doctor in 30 years. The last physical he got was from me when I was in nursing school.
How's THAT for health care? I bet your ass you don't put THAT in your little NRO rag.
Hmm. I'd be interested to know which police department he works for. Presumably not Pittsburgh, where the Fraternal Order of Police was founded. But even small municipal departments offer health benefits such that, if an officer goes three decades without seeing a doctor, it's his choice.
Meanwhile, just to keep you ROFLYAO a bit longer, here's a story from one of Quebec's most prestigious hospitals:
A woman admitted to Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital for an induced birth was forced into a do-it-yourself delivery last month, with only her non-medically trained common-law partner to assist...
At about 5 a.m. on May 13, medical help failed to appear even after Karine Lachapelle's water broke.
Despite attempts to summon help by partner Mark Schouls, who was pushing a nurse-alert button with increasing frequency as Lachapelle's contractions became more intense, the two delivered their new son, Kristophe, entirely on their own.
Lachapelle pushed the child out past his shoulders and face down, allowing Schouls to get a grip and pull the newborn the rest of the way out, he recounted.
There were no complications, and Kristophe was crying loudly within seconds...
Nobody on hospital staff will face disciplinary action, Kalina said.
"Both nurses were hard at work" in the pre-natal waiting area where Lachapelle had been placed. She was sharing a room with two other women with at-risk pregnancies.
"Both" nurses? Don't worry, that's for the Maternity wing, not the entire hospital.
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