Baby Joseph

[silcnlayc]

I just saw this article and read it and it scares me to death to know we might be following in these footsteps for our medical coverage..

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Here is the portion that scares me....

A 1-year-old boy whose family fought a Canadian hospital over whether he should be allowed to die received a tracheotomy at his St. Louis hospital early Monday morning.

The hospital would not perform a tracheotomy because they consider it to be an invasive procedure, one not typically recommended for patients who require a long-term breathing machine.

The child's parents, Moe and Sana Maraachli, refused to comply with court orders and sought instead to have their son transferred to a location where he could get a tracheotomy combined with continued mechanical ventilation and later be transferred home into their care.

If this were my 1 year old child, I too , would do whatever it took to make him comfortable during his illness...I mean..this child would have been left to suffocate to death..if left to the Canadian doctors choices and decision...what kind of care is this?? Is this what we are headed for? Life and and the most horrible way to die, death decisions??


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[chayton]

On the news a week or so ago they had a lady who lives here in Alberta, she's the mother of a young boy with a disease called "Job's sydrome." I won't bore you with the details of the disease, but the short version is that it's excrutiatingly painful. There's no cure, but there's medication that will help. But the medication is NOT covered by health care and it's horrifically expensive - approximately $3000 per month, and he'd have to take it forever.

Anyhow the lady went on the news to tell her story and reach out for help - one of the radio stations collected money for like a week and a half and came up with $40K to give to the family, and the health minister met with them and now I guess that they've come to an arrangement where his medication would be covered.

Anyhow this story turned out really well, but there are a lot of stories like that that don't turn out so well. People die waiting for hospital beds or diagnostics. People who have money can run to the US for treatment but a lot of people can't afford to do that.

I lived in Canada for a year before I could find a family doctor - most of them aren't accepting new patients. I waited almost 2 years to see a heart specialist. Although to be fair, when I had to have my surgery they got me in within a week. It's definitely not a perfect system.