Canadian Moms Flock to US

Thursday, October 11th, 2007 11:27 am by Neal

Some time ago, we had a story on a Canadian Mom who had to be airlifted to Montana to give birth because there was no room at Canadian Hospitals under Canada’s wonderful National Health Care Plan (see “Sicko” Maternity Care). Canadian officials insisted it was a rare, one-time event.

Bullshit. Canadian officials lie as much as American government toadies do.

Check out this story from Fox News, Canada’s Expectant Moms Heading to U.S. to Deliver:

Mothers in British Columbia are having a baby boom, but it’s the United States that has to deliver, and that has some proud Canadians blasting their highly touted government healthcare system.

“I’m a born-bred Canadian, as well as my daughter and son, and I’m ashamed,” Jill Irvine told FOX News. Irvine’s daughter, Carri Ash, is one of at least 40 mothers or their babies who’ve been airlifted from British Columbia to the U.S. this year because Canadian hospitals didn’t have room for the preemies in their neonatal units.

“It’s a big number and bigger than the previous capacity of the system to deal with it,” said Adrian Dix, a British Columbia legislator, told FOXNews.com. “So when that happens, you can’t have a waiting list for a mother having the baby. She just has the baby.”

The mothers have been flown to hospitals in Seattle, Everett, Wash., and Spokane, Wash., to receive treatment, as well as hospitals in the neighboring province of Alberta, Dix said. Three mothers were airlifted in the first weekend of October alone, including Carri Ash.

“I just want to go home and see my kids,” she said from her Seattle hospital bed. “I think it’s stupid I have to be here.”

Canada’s socialized health care system, hailed as a model by Michael Moore in his documentary, “Sicko,” is hurting, government officials admit, citing not enough money for more equipment and staff to handle high risk births.

Sarah Plank, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Ministry of Health, said a spike in high risk and premature births coupled with the lack of trained nurses prompted the surge in mothers heading across the border for better care.

Critics say these border crossings highlight the dangers of a government-run health care system.

“The Canadian healthcare system has used the United States as a safety net for years,” said Michael Turner of the Cato Institute. “In fact, overall about one out of every seven Canadian physicians sends someone to the United States every year for treatment.”

Neonatal intensive care units in Alberta and Ontario have also been stretched to capacity, she said.

The cost of these airlifts and treatments, paid to U.S. hospitals by the province under Canada’s universal health care system, runs upwards of $1,000 a child.

“We clearly want to see more capacity built in the Canadian system because it’s also expensive for taxpayers here to send people out of the country,” Dix said.

The surge could be due to women giving birth later in life, and passport restrictions and family separation adds to the stress.

Here’s your future, Americans, once Hillary is elected so that Big Nanny can provide for your every “need.” Where will the Canadians — and Americans for that matter — go when Hillary’s neonatal wards fill up? Who will provide the “safety net?” Actually, we answered that question in “Socialized Medicine Ends Freedom:”

That last two sentences say it all: “the decision is not his alone…the community must involve itself.” But what is “the community?” It is simply an abstract term for “a number of individual people.” So, in England’s national health care system, health care is rationed such that individuals who have “an increased risk” are sacrificed because there is “less opportunity to treat other patients.”

In this case, the “increased risk” is blamed on an individual’s free choice to smoke. It logically follows that other personal choices such as excessive eating, drinking alcohol, lack of exercise, etc. could likewise create an “increased risk.”

It also logically follows that involuntary conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and an endless list of maladies could create an “increased risk” that results in an individual being denied care in order to ration it for “the community.”

Socialized medicine replaces the individual as the recipient of health care with the community. But since the community is simply a number of individual people, what does this really mean?

Like smoking, hypertension, diabetes, etc., premature babies present an “increased risk” that Hillary’s “community” will sacrifice to health care rationing. In other words, expensive, premature babies will just have to be “sacrificed” in a rationed system.

You heard it here first, and denying it won’t change the inevitable reality of a Communist health care system. Now, go stick your head back in the sand.

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