I am a true believer in the public health system. It is one of the big things that makes Canada the greatest country in the world. This week I had an opportunity to see what it would be like to have a private system and that preview was one of the scariest things I’ve encountered in my 37 years on this earth.
My husband Szejn and I had two friends from Italy come and visit. As we wanted to provide them with a little taste of Canada, Szejn decided to taking them skating. 20 minutes in to this truly Canadian experience one of our friends fell and ended up breaking his leg. The ambulance was called and he was taken to the hospital and this is where a combination of amazing care and the horror of no insurance coverage quickly converged.
As I was at work, I’m told quickly after arriving at the hospital almost a thousand dollars was quickly collected by the hospital to cover the ambulance ride and the emergency room visit. A visit, we would all quickly discover, would reveal that our friend had to have surgery to repair the leg.
When I arrived at the hospital, the room that I joined my friends in was called the cast room and was full of well-trained nurses and doctors attending to my friend. Just the sight of having that kind of care around him made me feel better as I immediately had confidence that he had every resource to repair his leg and take away the pain.
Slowly my reassurance turned and I started to see a pattern in the doctors, a mix of amazing medical care and the ring of the cash register in their ears. My confidence in their ability was quickly jaded by the aggressive nature in which the doctors wanted their fees paid. As they finished working on my friend and prepping his leg for surgery, the discussion quickly changed from care to cash. We were told we had to pay them for what they had just done and it would be $300.
We needed to pay and we needed to pay now. So with their portable visa machine in hand, the doctor took an imprint of our visa and collected his fee at the foot of the bed where my friend lay in pain. It was a little surreal, as even in a restaurant, they don’t collect after every course. You are treated like a human being and given the chance to pay your bill after the entire dinning experience is over but no such courtesy provided at the hospital.
The next medical professional we encountered was the surgeon, who told us that the friend would be able to have surgery and we would need to provide $3,000 for the surgery. There was a strong impression provided that if that if we didn’t come up with the money, our friend wouldn’t have the opportunity of the surgery. I was dumb struck be the very scenario that was unfolding in front of us.
So to sum up the list of expenses that were being presented to us: there was $1,000 paid for the ambulance and emergency room visit, $300 for the doctors to prep for surgery, $3,000 for our friend to get the surgery, which did not include the $1,000 we were told the anesthesiologist would charge and oh, I almost forgot, just over $2,000 a day for the hospital room. A room in which our friend would need to enjoy for a minimum of two days but maybe 3 so that is another $6,000. A total visit that could cost $12,000 and everyone wanted their money now.
As we had ever intention of taking care of the charges, we assumed the hospital and doctors would assist us in utilizing my friend’s Italian insurance. That was not the case, especially for the doctors who would hear nothing of the sort. The hospital, along with the doctor, didn’t want anything to do with the insurance he had, at least the hospital eventually agreed to bill my friend’s insurance.
So, not only did we have to worry about our friend having to endure surgery and the recovery, we now had worry about coming up with $12,000 on the spot. Szejn and I were quickly on the phone trying to see if we could get our credit card limits raised. Our friends, including the one in bed, had to go through their wallets to get pool their cash to get the surgery.
The surgeon didn’t even want to give us a detailed invoice of his services. He said he didn’t do that. We fought to explain that no insurance company would reimburse an invoice that didn’t have details of what the costs were for. So as his anger mounted by the insistence that we get some details, he went to the nurses station, grabbed a piece of scrap paper and scribbled down 5 points, most of which had nothing to do with what he did, as the items he had written were for services we paid outside of his surgical fee. The man may be a brilliant surgeon, but an ass of a human being.
Another example of this surgeon's character is when we actually tried to pay him. Even though initially said it would be $3,000, it ended up be $2,750. We had scrambled up the funds to pay him and when we presented him with the cash, he said he wouldn't accept it and would only take a cheque or credit card. When we insisted, he wouldn't even give any indication that his invoice had been paid. It was actually the wonderful nurse within the unit that my friend was staying in that agreed to sign the invoice as having been paid via cash. She signed her own name while the surgeon looked on. He made her hold the money while he finished his rounds.
This is the picture of our medical system and how it treats visitors to our country. If you think this look at our system is bad, one only has to express what one of the employees at the hospital said to Szejn. Her words were if you think this is bad, you should have seen the trouble that a person from Israel had last week.
Wow, they know they treat visitors from all sorts of countries badly and no one wants to do anything about it. Did any one ever tell the health authority that these visitors contribute greatly to our economy and the tax system that helps pay for the system. One only has to contact any Canadian tourist association to find out that visitors to this country contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.
Funny, I don’t see any warnings on the ads to draw visitors to Canada that invite them to Canada to spend their money, but be careful, don’t hurt yourself on the visit because you will be treated like trash at the hospital.
Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the hospital room that my friend was charged $2,000 a day didn’t actually exist until his last night in the hospital. The hospital was too full and didn’t have any rooms so he stayed in the recovery room from surgery waiting for a room. Nice!
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