The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I have been following the current debate on national health insurance in absolute amazement. How can a consulting company come to our country and tell us that we should implement a system that has bankrupted other countries that are bigger and wealthier than ours? All the government can say is trust us, we would never do anything to hurt the economy!

Unfortunately, this and many other governments around the world have done nothing but hurt economies and generations of people have suffered the consequences while typically the politicians retire quite wealthy with wonderful pensions and health benefits so they are insulated from the problems they have caused their countries. All too often in this debate I’ve heard how Canada or the United Kingdom have such wonderful healthcare systems. I can tell you from first-hand experience having lived in Canada for many years exactly what the Canadian healthcare system is all about.

My wife and I have recently moved home after having lived in Canada for most of our adult lives while I pursued my career. I would like to give you the example of my father-in-law, which is not an unusual story.

Firstly, everybody must understand that specialist care in Canada is very limited, when I say limited there are very few doctors who provide this care. There are also limitations on certain diagnostic tests. My father-in-law suffered from three chronic conditions as he got older, he was in his mid-70s.

The last few years of his life were spent waiting for doctors appointments, because you cannot get one quickly. When I say waiting I mean waiting a month or more to get into see the specialist. Once he saw the specialist he would be sent for tests, which could take weeks or more to get. He would then have to wait for his next appointment to have the results of the test reviewed. This whole process quite often would take three or more months. With his three conditions my father-in-law spent virtually an entire year going from doctor to doctor, his life became one in which he lived only to wait to see his doctors.

Not only did it take him a year to make the rounds of his doctors, these doctors did not talk to each other and co-ordinate his care. This went on for more than three years, he was in a constant state of limbo not knowing what was truly going on with his health. This is very common in the Canadian system!

When it comes to routine care, you need to be very patient in Canada. Not only is the care substandard due to the wait times and lack of coordination between physicians, it is also very expensive. Canada has very high sales taxes and income taxes that can be over 40 per cent of a person’s income. Half of every dollar collected in Canada in taxes goes to pay for their health care system, which is still underfunded. Canadians spend three times more than we spend per person on healthcare, and a rich country like Canada still can’t afford it.

Back to my father-in-law, earlier this year he was having difficulty breathing, one of his three conditions, and he went into his local hospital. There was a new young doctor running the intensive care unit that week and when he reviewed his case we had an honest conversation where he admitted that my father-in-law had not been properly managed.

This young doctor admitted him to intensive care and told us he would personally try to get his drugs sorted out, because one of the drugs was probably causing one if not two of the conditions from which he was suffering. At last in over three years of struggling to get through this system we finally found a doctor who was going to pull together everything and take care of him as a whole person. My father-in-law passed away the next morning, the Canadian system had let this man down!

I would like to give you another story about my father-in-law and his care in Canada. Just so everybody understands he lived in a large town just outside of the city of Toronto. Medically speaking this is the most advanced area for healthcare in Ontario, the most populous and wealthiest province in Canada. My father-in-law had progressive onset of shortness of breath while exercising. He went to his local doctor who initially treated him for a respiratory ailment, but his shortness of breath continued.

He was starting to have difficulty sleeping while lying flat so he would sit up in the bed or at times sleep in a chair which he found more comfortable. After a while when he was no better he decided to go back to this Doctor, which took him another two weeks to get in. This time she referred him to a cardiologist. His appointment for the cardiologist took almost two months to get, during which time he continued to sleep more and more in a chair because lying flat was too difficult for him.

When he saw the cardiologist, he failed his stress test and was referred to the hospital for an angiogram. You’d expect when a person fails a stress test that the angiogram would come fairly quickly after that happening, but not in Canada it took another month to get him in to have the angiogram (looks at the arteries of the heart).

After the angiogram, he was told that he had three almost fully blocked arteries in his heart and that he would need a triple bypass surgery. He was kept in the hospital and prepared for the surgery he was told that they did only two bypass surgeries per day in the hospital and that if an emergency came up he might get bumped from the surgical list for that day. He was prepared for surgery, but he was also prepared to die. Family gathered who prayed with him, some tears were shed and we all prepared for him to go into his surgery. The morning came and he asked us to make sure that his wife would be taken care of if he did not survive. He told everybody how he loved them and he was wheeled off to the theatre.

Much to our dismay later he was brought back to the room without having had the surgery and we were told that an emergency had occurred and he was bumped from the list for the day. This was absolute mental cruelty for this man. The sad thing is that the next three days in a row the exact same thing occurred, he prepared for surgery kissed everybody and made peace and off he went and was brought back down, that made four attempts at having his bypass!

At this point in time, he was mentally exhausted four times he was wheeled up and four times he was brought back. The sad thing is you can’t fire the doctors, and in truth it was not their fault, it was the fault of the system that limited the number of bypasses that would could be done in a day. All those tax dollars being spent over all those years and this is the way you are treated, some bureaucrat deciding how many surgeries can be done for the sake of the budget.

The fifth time is a charm, at least from my father-in-law because on that day the first attempt was successful. He had his triple bypass which he survived and recovered from quite well. He was thankful to be alive but for the first time he openly started questioning where was the wonderful healthcare that he was promised and he paid all his money into. As much as the United States doesn’t have the perfect system, I can promise you neither does Canada.

A BAHAMAN WHO KNOWS

Nassau,

December 14, 2015.