A tribute to Cannadian health care from an email I got this morning

[upaloopa]

Hi Jim and Dale,



After much anticipation about coming to the reunion, I now have to inform you that I will not be able to attend the upcoming event. I just returned from a 4 day hospitalization due to a major heart attack that I had. I am recovering well enough but there will be followup surgeries in the coming weeks.



"My first reactions were "not me; this wasn't going to be happening to me" I've never smoked and had a great, healthy life". But, as it turned out, genetics proved to be my so-called undoing in this regard.



The medical care I got was superb. I went to our local general hospital here in Brantford, Ontario around midnight. The place was very busy but they saw me immediately and determined that I was in the midst of a major heart attack. They right away put me into an ambulance with two EMS personnel and a personal nurse and sent me 25 miles away to Hamilton, Ontario where I was admitted into the Regional Cardiac Center at Hamilton General Hospital and 30 minutes later they were sucking out the blockage and inserting a stint or sometimes called a stent. There still is another blockage on another part of the heart at about 90% and that will be part of another visit around the time of the reunion.



Oh yeah, forgive me but I feel I need to point out something. I saw lots of misinformation and bad press about Canada's government-run medical system on American TV in recent years. I had the best care and had 4 days in two very excellent hospitals with all sorts of attendants, medications and tests. Even the food was very good, although I wasn't that hungry. Anyway, more to my point, after all this and all the future visits I will be involved with and all medications I am and will be on, I have got no and will get no hospital or doctor bills. Yes, perhaps we pay for this with higher taxes, but from my perspective, I love this system.



You guys enjoy yourselves at the reunion, I will be thinking of you guys and all the fun I will be missing.



Take care,

[Romulox]

1. This guy would've been MUCH better off if he had been forced to buy private insurance,

and then charged the difference between what the hospital charged him and what the for-profit private insurer decided to pay.

That would make him a smarter consumer next time he decided to have a heart attack!

[jwirr]

2. That is about what I hear from Canadians who come to shop in Duluth. No horror stories from them.