July 27. 2009 13:39

It would be interesting to know how much she was paid for the ad/ads. Other than that it is a non starter. USA has a med system - we have a med system. So why should I care about theirs or why should I care about what they say down there about mine?

Bruce Trainor

July 27. 2009 14:30

Seems to me anyone could find an American in the same financial bracket this Holmes lady belongs to saying essentially the same thing.

It is unfortunate that the great unwashed make up their opinions based on media reports and advertisements and that political groups use this to influence the great unwashed masses.

As far as Holmes goes ...she's obviously one of the great unwashed profiting from the great unwashed! Will you let this influence you?

Bertrand Beaudry

July 27. 2009 16:11

I agree with Dr. Brandes that Shona went over the top with her claim that if she had waited for care in Canada she would have been dead. At the same time her story does highlight the very real and serious problem many patients experience: the long wait times to be seen in the ER; and the even longer wait times to be seen by a specialist.

I waited 3 and a half hours in the ER with my 83 year old father who had fallen and broken his hip. Why should it take that long for anyone's excruciating pain to be addressed with treatment? And then another 3 hours before the orthopedic surgeon told me that yes, the hip was broken and then presented the options of doing nothing, meaning that Dad would die in some discomfort or surgery, meaning it still didn't look good but at least Dad would have less pain.

If you are old and in ill health it would seem they can't be much bothered with you and the attitude is you are taking resources from younger patients who would benefit in the longer term. Yes, that's another blatant example of ageism.

Ole Nielson

July 27. 2009 16:25

I work for the health care system in Canada and i can tell you two of the major problems are lack of appropriate funding (cut backs, downsizing etc.) as well as people ignorant of the system. The Flu does not warrant a trip to the ER. Half of what people go to the ER for doesn't warrant the trip to the ER. Waiting 3 hours because of a fall is most likely the norm, each person is triaged when they come in based on their injuries and often times people have to wait a long time because a more seriously injured patient comes in first. Fact of life.
Most people don't know this but clinics are limited to the number of hours they can operate based on the number of phyisicans working there and the number of patients seen, this is stupid, have operating hours and see as many patients as possible.
The older population in our area receive some of the best care in the country. Ageism doesn't exist, it is all about level of care.
I have seen people refuse to take their older family memebers home because they don't want to care for them, or claim they can't yet when the system finds a community bed for them, the family refuses to put them there because it is a 30 minute drive from their house, so a lot of the problems people face in health care as self inflicted (no pun intended).
This woman in the article should be ashamed of herself. Had she applied a bit more pressure to her physician she could have gotten treatment right away. Her physician should also be ashamed, most physicians in this country make a million or more a year, about time they earned it.
If everyone is so adimant that they want better health care then perhpas they should pay up a bit more. I would gladly double my monthly health care costs to help the system.
Let's make those that are not "legal" citizens yet pay for health care shall we.

Van Rich

July 29. 2009 01:12

I am so sorry, Canadians are attacking Shona Holmes. We should all take a step back, take a deep breath, and apologize to this woman.

Canadian healthcare has many problems that need to be corrected. The truth is that there are long waiting lists in this country. I have a friend with colon cancer, it took weeks for him to see an oncologist in Nova Scotia. His first appointment was to meet the doctor, to discuss further tests, and a possible treatment plan. He then required surgery. It took a good two months for him to have his operation. Keep in mind that he has cancer. We are not all getting into hospital quickly even when a problem is life-threatening. This is due to the critical bed shortage. It’s almost impossible to even get a hospital bed even when one is seriously ill.

I've known other Canadians who have also experienced long waits to see various doctors and these were all very sick people with all sorts of serious health problems: heart disease, cancer (various types), lung disease, and so on. Waiting weeks and months to see a specialist is the norm in this province. It’s pathetic actually, we are waiting too long, and this can lead to death by waiting lists.

My father was friends with an elderly man who had been waiting a full year to receive a new knee. Some of you will say that his surgery was only elective and not urgent. Think of the pain this poor gentleman was experiencing. He could barely walk and looked as though he could break down and cry. I felt so sorry for his suffering and for his long wait. If only he could have the surgery, now, the pain would be soon gone. What a difference that would make for this dear man. I also overheard, men and women talking about waiting two years to receive a new hip. These individuals are also in pain. Think about their suffering; the fact is that they wanted to get on with their lives. One woman was fairly young, in pain, she could lose work time. No one wants to lose their job which happens to some Canadians due to the long waiting lists. When pain becomes intolerable, working is extremely difficult, often employers and colleagues are understanding for so long, so there goes the job.

In Halifax, it once took five years to get into the adult pain clinic. Imagine, five years! That's much too long for people suffering from various medical problems, many that happen to be severe. The last I heard was that the pain clinic list was down to two-and-a-half years (for waiting), however, the clinic was no longer taking new patients. Good luck to those in pain. Now, I do believe there are some other doctors now specializing in treating pain, but what if someone could better benefit from this more expert pain clinic?

I was talking to a person with lung disease, she needs a sleep study. The problem? There is a two year wait list for a sleep study even for serious problems, in her case, lung disease.

In Shona's case she was going blind. How would any of you feel if you had to wait weeks-to-months to see a specialist, and you risked losing your eyesight? if you could get treatment more quickly in another country would you not go elsewhere? I know that I would definitively leave Canada to save my eyesight. Furthermore, Mrs. Holmes was suffering from cushing's syndrome which is serious.

As Canadians, we can choose to ignore our fellow Canadians suffering or we can choose to go to bat for one and all. No one in this country should be going without timely and compassionate care. We can be dishonest with our self and others and say, "There are few problems with Canadian healthcare." The truth is that there are many problems with our healthcare system. This is not a system that treats well, the chronically-ill. While some Canadians do get excellent care, there are too many falling between the cracks. These are the individuals being left behind. Please, contact your MP and MLA, and tell him or her that every Canadian deserves exceptional healthcare. Too many are being left behind. Thanks.

Jill

July 29. 2009 11:31

That's a pretty good article by Dr. Brandes, and I appreciate her sincere attempt at objectivity.

Her argument boils down to this: "Yes, it looks like Shona's case was subject to delays even though she needed urgent care, but this was because her doctor didn't make a few calls and press for a specialist, not because of the system."

And therein lies the problem. We shouldn't have to rely on someone in the system "aggressively advocat[ing]" by making "Physician-to-physician calls" that "are usually effective and speed up appointments considerably."

Once the problem is diagnosed, it should be up to us to get the treatment we need, and we should be able to get it by asking for it and showing the diagnosis, not by having some public sector employee gratuitously take up our cause and pull strings on our behalf.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with our system. Funding is provided by the government, and therefore limited. Hence supply has to be rationed. Hence those who need care need someone on the inside to plead their case. Hence people like Shona slip through the cracks, and either suffer from lack of care or go to the US where the supply is limited only by your willingness to pay.

Gaunilon

July 30. 2009 07:29

Bruce, I hope she got paid well for her ad. It will help pay for the medical treatment she did indeed urgently require! Are you familiar with Cushings and the devestating effects it has?
Ole, I wish more people would go 'over the top' with their stories. It is not only the elderly who are being denied treatment, or perhaps you didn't see that Shona is only 31?
Van Rich:
"Had she applied a bit more pressure to her physician she could have gotten treatment right away. Her physician should also be ashamed, most physicians in this country make a million or more a year, about time they earned it."
Have you any idea what happens when you apply a bit more pressure to your physicians? They become "former" physicians! To even suggest to 'most' physicians that they could be mistaken in their diagnoses, or express any concerns or questions, is a death sentence to your access for care! Do you not think physicians talk to each other? Have you ever been 'black-balled' from adequate care because you have done more research on a specific condition than the physicians you have seen? It's not fun! As for physicians earning their pay, why are they not subject to stricter regulations regarding keeping current with health issues, diseases, and hereditary syndromes? Seems every occupation from banking to airline pilots has licencing requirements...why not doctors?
Jill and Gaunilon: Amen to that! Seems you two have your head on straight about the medical system in Canada. For some reason, even with a diagnosis, we seem unable to obtain treatment in Canada. Doctors play God with our lives, and then scorn us for seeking treatment elsewhere. Has Medicare ever checked some of the physician's 'assessments' of the patients they've seen? It would probably shock them at how many doctors are getting paid for doing absolutely nothing during a clinic visit, leaving the patient to diagnose themselves. Perhaps these 'rare' diseases wouldn't be so rare afterall if people were getting the care and attention they required!
I also have a complicated medical issue, partly diagnosed and denied treatment because "the Canadian system lags behind the U.S. in terms of guidelines for my condition". So where does that leave me? I have pushed physicians and now have no physician. I also am seeking treatment in the U.S., and no I am not old...although after fighting our health system for the past 10 years, I certainly feel it!!

Another Cushie

August 3. 2009 12:38

It's not so much what our medical system doesn't do as it is what it does. Practices are built by billing more per patient, not by getting more patients. The whole incentive is to keep the tests coming, keep the patients "unwell" but not sick. Blood tests are conducted until a result is determined which requires treatment. Then the tests are discontinued and treatment begins. Blood pressure is taken until it is "abnormal". Then treatment begins. Referrals are made to "specialists" who, after a cursory examination, do nothing. Conditions persist and are "treated" but not to the extent that they are cured. Doctors learn from dentists. Dentists go to school in California to learn practice building technique.

The single payer system is not efficient and there is no incentive to make it so. Rather, the incentive is to compound the inefficiencies, to maximize billings.

Increases in health care spending cannot continue to exceed economic growth indefinitely. Sooner or later a threshold of pain will be reached and the system as we know it will require significant modification. The sooner, the better.

Troglodyte

August 5. 2009 14:35

ROY GREEN: Apologists roared into overdrive attacking Waterdown's Holmes
http://www.bayobserver.ca/index.php?post_id=332

another view

August 6. 2009 08:25

Ms Holmes'condition seems to vary according to the audience. She has already been the subject of a syrupy advertisement for the Mayo.

Her experience is rather different from my own.

I had similar problems,and in the same danger of sight loss or nerve damage. I received treatment in reasonable time and appropriate responses to my concerns. My specialist appointment was moved up in response to a sudden problem.

I certainly had treatment in the US, proton beam radiation which is the only efective radiation for my malignant tumor. Provincial healthcare paid. There was a queue for proton beam treatment at that time and paying privately would not have made a difference.

Betty

August 6. 2009 15:50

Read this piece from the CBC; if there was a risk to vision; it can be reversible: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/07/31/medicare-ad-exaggeration523.html.
Are you saying she should have passed before some burn victim or a child with actual cancer?
As for this lawsuit to OHIP: WRONG!! She chose the Mayo Clinic. Some friends have made calls & researched what Buffalo (alot closer to Shona's home) had to offer. Comparable care with some highly reputable professionals for about 20 000$ less....
Also, she complains about paying taxes for our health care system which looks at urgency instead of socio-economic class like in the US. But she has no problem accepting the taxpayers footing her legal bills funneled through the Canadian Constitutional Foundation???
Please explain the fairness in this!!
Health care in the states is terrible & for her to actually advocate this & try to get this in Canada. I have all the research to back this all up.
The CCF has a stake in paying her legal costs---Harper always expressed an American style 2-tiered system. He can't get it without a majority gov't. If she is successful, well, here's a way of getting this agenda through the back doors of parliament.

Kelly Twight

August 6. 2009 21:53

A reality check on a reality check, July 12
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Serious+situation/1788224/story.html

another view

August 10. 2009 03:16

What about us Canadians refused timely care who did not have the cash to fly off to another country for care?

If your problem is that she may or may not have died or gone blind, how about those of us who have been forced to watch their health and lives rot away waiting for care? Right now...while you read this.
Is two years waiting reasonable for a disorder that is disfiguring and much more complicated after even a few months? What about the province stating that your infection must be cured in a 30 day period, but your still sick? And you have no family Doctor to speak for you? No walk in clinics or any other access to care but the hopsital emergency room? Having to pay $100's (may not seem much unless you just do not have it),to travel because there are no services of any kind but then to have the travel grant refused because i have no family Dr.

The answer is that even our wonderful canadian system has become corrupted. Our colleges of physicians care so little for my health, they are willing to allow me to slowly become crippled from a potentially cureable illness. My province is allowed to enforce guidelines that have be found faulty in an anti trust case in the US and are being rewritten. I can be refused care by any doctor, with no recourse. I can be told that my local hospital can choose not to treat me, even if it leaves me with no other care. (and I have broken no law, and behaved peacefully)

The same corporations that have blatantly profiteered from the current american system, are exerting their influence in Canada. I personally am of the opinion that once they figured out how easy it was to control a Canadian style system, Through Colleges of physicians and through funding universities and research, they wanted to get the same control over the american system.
It has been suggested that certain aspects of NAFTA even prevent the Canadian governments from treating certain diseases, as it may cause "damage" to American corporations. Far fetched sounding but even in my admitted ignorance of the details, it explains how a cureable illness can be ignored and suppressed despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, both in research and results. why a trusted friend of the family and physician shrugs and says that they cannot afford the risk of getting in trouble with the college. (whispers"there is too much money involved""get private help in the US")

Why are laws being passed to protect Doctors from their own Colleges in several states? Why are Canadian colleges doing the same thing to Doctors? It is not the socialized healthcare, it is the industrialized medicine that is the problem. Even a great system is open to potential corruption. We can not be treated like a herd of cattle, for best profit margins, with the full co-operation of our Governments, in the interest of profit or economy.

sad and troubling , and for me at least, crippling and disfiguring and painful, and potentially deadly.


I recommend that you avoid getting bitten by ticks that carry a disease our Doctors say is not here, that they admit to know nothing about, but are sure you do not have. Particularly if you are poor. It is a very slow and painful way to die for your country(or at least it's banksters).

ticked

August 11. 2009 21:16

Let's say that Shona Holme's physician erred. It looks as though he/she did. That doesn't happen in the U.S.? Let's assume she was an American citizen and was paying a bundle, if she could afford it, or her employer was paying a bundle for her health insurance. Let's further assume that her doctor didn't err in his assesment of urgency of the problem. It would still be possible that she would be denied the surgery by some clerk sitting in a cubicle at her insurance company. Not so improbable. Insurance companies measure success not by their humanitarian behaviour but by the amount of money they make. Or, in other words by the number of claims they can deny.

Gordon Watt

October 27. 2009 20:42

I think her point was valid and timely. MRI waits in Canada are ridiculous, so going to the Mayo clinic was a wise and appropriate decisiosn under the circumstances. Canada's socialized health care is frought with delay especially surgical waiting times. Inappropriate assessments of thyroid cases occur by the 1000's each day in Canada because free T3 levels are rarely ordered even though free T3 is the bio active form of the thyroid hormones - ergo - thousands with hypothyroid are left in the lurch. Young severely overwight people who pass a GTT never have their blood inflammation levels checked beyond CRP. Canada's health care system needs an overhauul.

Mark

March 2. 2010 12:40

How can anyone complain about our health care? Did she have to pay for the numerous trips to the doctor to take the initial tst done? No. Did she have to pay for the first MRI scan? No. Did she have to have additional health coverage to even be considered beeing seen by anyone in this country? No. Would any of these perliminary tests cost $1000 upon $1000's of dollars in the U.S. ? Yes. What about the costs of the things that we all take for granted? Emergency room visits, check ups, exams, vaccinations etc. All covered by the gov't. In the U.S.? No.
I do agree that we have way more hypochondriacs because, well, they can afford it. Our emergency rooms are full of people who have minor injuries that I wouldn't consider going to the doctor for. I am going on a limb here, but I assume that over half the people who go to the emergency room are treated with either ib-porfin or acetaminophen.
Now if we were to forced to pay for treatment that wasn't an emergency we would have alot more resources freed up and alot more people staying home and taking care of themselves instea of giong to the ER to get told to take tylenol and "staff off it for a few days". I know this will add another level of problems like who decides what's an emergancy and how much to charge. Will this lead to other areas of the helath care system being "payment triaged".
When I look at the rest of the world and all we have here and all the comforrts we as a country enjoy, I feel really good about our health care system. I have used it in very serious emergancies and found it to be very effective. Not perfect but very effective. Another thing people forget about when looking in from the outside is would you rathe have a problem with our free service and or be paying for service like in the states and deal with their health care problems. Oh and they do have problems, lots of them.

james Murray

May 21. 2010 22:40

I had surgery for a malignant tumour in the same place as Ms Holmes' cyst. I saw a neurologist in two days from the first symptom, double vision, with a CT the same day. The MRI was three days later and I was referred to a surgeon.

When the condition worsened I was moved up the surgeon's schedule. The first symptoms were in late April and surgery was in early June. I visited the hospital numerous times in that period for tests and assessments. My surgery was done transphenoidally [through my nose] and I was out of hospital in four days. I had proton beam radiation in Boston, paid for by OHIP, paying my own travel and accomodation.

I have now gone for eight years without a recurrence, which is an outstanding recurrence free survival for the tumour that I had.

I appreciate how distressing any sort of head growth can be but I am appalled by the way in which this woman has profited from her political activity.

christine woodward

June 8. 2010 18:14

It is always what you do not know that hurts you. American health costs are what 40% higher, american health care is profit motivated meaning it is run like a business only. Look at the gulf oil spill, american ideology dictates that business will do the right thing and they do. THEY DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR THEM NOT THE PERSON/CUSTOMER. period. A good example of that is a new federal study in the United States finds many same-day surgery centers — where patients get such things as foot operations and pain injections — have serious problems with infection control.
Failure to wash hands, wear gloves and clean blood glucose meters were among the reported breaches. Clinics reused devices meant for one person or dipped into single-dose medicine vials for multiple patients.This was a sample of some 5,000 outpatient centers.

The study was prompted by a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas believed to be caused by unsafe injection practices at two now-closed clinics. And what is even more scary is the fact that Nearly 70 percent had at least one lapse The new study found 67 percent of the centers had at least one lapse in infection control and 57 percent were cited for deficiencies.
"These people knew they were under observation, had the opportunity to be on their best behavior and yet these lapses were still identified, some of which potentially are very dangerous and have been warned against explicitly, Americans are always bragging they have the best heath care, but clearly it is only for the rich and enttiled ones, no thanks I am glad and happy to have canadian health care, and at the end of the day no system is perfect but Canada is. Okay there I go again being proud to be Canadain

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