Hallway medicine is hitting new highs in congested Lower Mainland hospitals, as was demonstrated Monday night when Royal Columbian Hospital was forced to use its Tim Hortons outlet as an overflow ward.

Fraser Health officials say a combination of multiple trauma case airlifts earlier in the day and heavy pressure on the emergency department led staff to put patients in the hospital coffee shop.

It’s an unusual example of what has become a routine problem across the region: too many patients and not enough beds.

“Last night the hallways were two and three stretchers deep with patients,” said Dr. Sheldon Glazer, an emergency physician at Royal Columbian, the region’s trauma centre.

“This is just a natural progression of what we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time,” Glazer said. “We are forced to see patients in waiting rooms, in hallways and, now, in the Tim Hortons.”

The veteran ER doctor says halls jammed with stretchers are both inefficient and dangerous – particularly if a fire broke out.

Whenever the inevitable topic of wait times comes up in a discussion about healthcare, proponents of the socialist system will say, “Well, no system is perfect.” They’re absolutely correct. So assuming that the private and public system both have their flaws, which is preferable — having to spend money on insurance or medical care instead of having it for free? Or, dying while waiting for ‘free’ medical care? Seems like a simple decision to me.

Regarding my recent hospitalization, I stated — and still maintain — that I am not going to engage in a debate about healthcare, because my opinion still holds. However, despite the extraordinary emergency care I received, follow-up wait times were unacceptable. In the internal medicine unit, patients were being admitted who had been waiting in the emergency room for upwards of three and four days. Were they dying? No, but they certainly weren’t getting any healthier.

The Tim Horton’s spin on this story makes it more amusing, but being so backed up that you can’t even have patients in the waiting room is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Even under perfect circumstances, the province of British Columbia considers it a success if patients are admitted with less than 10 hours of waiting.

Remember, I had a stroke in a waiting room. But hey, at least I didn’t have to pay anything (just ended up hobbling around like an old lady with a walker, but whatever.)

H/T KonReport

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The year 2010 will stand as a watershed in regulation. In all likelihood, government at every level imposed more dictates on more facets of citizens’ lives than ever before, from the timing of stock trades to the proper size of showerheads. Lawmakers and regulators construct complex cost–benefit calculations to justify the rules, but they never account for the erosion of liberty inherent in each and every one. Some regulations are far worse than others, of course, exacting disproportionate costs—fiscal and otherwise. The 10 listed below rank as particularly egregious, and all deserve a swift demise in the year to come.

1. There hardly could be a more inapt title for the Obamacare legislation than the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Neither protection nor affordable describes the federal government forcing Americans to buy specific types of health care coverage from particular types of insurers. For sheer constitutional insult, the individual mandate ranks among 2010’s worst regulations.

2. The Dodd–Frank financial regulation will ultimately encompass some 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. Most every sector of finance will be hit by rules that will inhibit product innovation and availability of credit. Creation of the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” to regulate all manner of financial products and services—including mortgages, credit cards, even student loans—constitutes regulatory overload of the highest order. For its vaguely defined powers and sweeping mandate, the bureau belongs among the year’s 10 worst regulatory exploits.

Continue

On January 1, 2011, several new elements of Obamacare came into effect. These measures lay the groundwork for higher premiums and the eventual government takeover of healthcare.

Your HSA and FSA is a lot less valuable

In the past, you could purchase over the counter medical supplies – such as Advil, allergy pills, and cold medicine – using your Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Savings Account (FSA). No income tax was paid on the money that you saved in either of these accounts.

Thanks to Obamacare, you can no longer purchase over the counter medications using these accounts unless you get a doctor’s prescription.

This will have two big effects:

1. Increase the real cost of over the counter drugs because you cannot easily purchase them with pretax dollars

2. Waste doctors’ time and increase the price of health insurance because doctors will be asked to write prescriptions for over the counter drugs just for the tax benefits.

A Provision Now Limits How Insurance Companies Use your Premiums

This one is unbelievable – a game changer in the insurance business. This is a leap towards the government takeover of healthcare.

Insurance companies now are forced to spend at least 80% of the insurance premium on patients. If a company or group purchases a healthcare plan, this number jumps to 85%.

The remaining 15%-20% of your premium may be spent on advertising, sales, administrative salary, profit, etc..

This provision will have numerous effects – some of which are:

1. It will force insurance companies out of states where administrative costs are higher – simply because these states will be unprofitable.

2. It changes the insurance business model – typically your insurance company will take big profits from healthy patients (who consequently, don’t make large insurance claims) and lose money on customers who get sick. Obviously, insurance companies want their customers to stay healthy (fewer claims). Now, they need their customers to get sick to meet this government requirement.

This will drive ‘cadillac’ plans out of existence. Insurance companies have no benefit from high margin plans – the only way to increase profit is to cover more people (you can no longer increase margins). Plans will be designed to fit the needs of large groups of people - individually tailored plans designed to fit your specific needs are a thing of the past.

Claim service and doctor payments will all be affected too. Companies will reduce their administrative staff to the bare minimum (one of the few ways to affect profit margin). Be prepared to sit on hold for several hours only to talk to someone in India when you call your insurance company.

This provision sets up an incredible moral hazard that should be unimaginable in America – the government telling a private company what its profit margin must be. If the company is charging too much, competitors will take advantage of the situation by offering lower prices. Perhaps the government should limit grocery store margins too – we all need food. This is the absurdity of big government.

3. The new model is impossible – companies can only use 15%-20% of their margins on advertising, administration, and profit – so they need as many customers as possible. Yet they need to spend more on advertising and administration to pay for all of the new customers. This will inevitably decrease profits and the number of companies participating in the health insurance market.

Don’t worry – once provisions like these eliminate all of the private insurance companies, I’m confident that President Obama and the Democrats will have a solution – government run healthcare.

If you don’t want the government running healthcare, there is only one option: REPEAL.

Liberals in Congress and the media are worried that the GOP actually plans on fighting the Democrat socialist agenda.

Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear lamented in the New York Times:

The health care law, entitlement programs, new limits on emissions of greenhouse gases from oil refineries and power plants, and other legislation that Republicans say cannot be justified by a strict interpretation of the Constitution — a document the new leaders plan to read on the House floor on Thursday — are all in the cross hairs.

While President Obama and Republicans were able to work together during last month’s lame-duck session — to the vocal consternation of the most partisan ends of each party’s base — to pass a tax package and a variety of last-minute legislation, including the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and the ratification of the anti-nuclear proliferation treaty with Russia, such bipartisan consensus seems unlikely at the outset of the new House session.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who is in line to succeed Ms. Pelosi, has said that this time around he would lead efforts to revive the private sector by reducing the size of government — cutting federal regulation, taxes and spending, including the budget of Congress itself.

Mr. Boehner also said Republicans would alter House rules to make it easier to curb government spending and to require more public disclosure about the work of the House.

House Republicans plan on passing a full repeal of Obamacare as a symbolic act, acknowledging that it will be stopped in the Senate, or vetoed by the President. However, after setting the tone, the GOP plans on defunding and dismantling Obamacare piece by piece. Additionally, with Paul Ryan’s Road Map the GOP is finally starting to talk about realistic entitlement reforms.

Fueled by a reverence for the Constitution and an acknowledgment of reality, Republicans won in 2010 by representing the alternative to Obamunism. If the Grand Old Party wishes to remain in power surrender is not an option.

Mitch McConnell stated that his foremost political priority is ensuring that Barack Obama is a one-term president. Republicans are openly stating that they plan on using Obamacare as an albatross to hang around Democrats in 2012. The only way to fix the economy, and the country, is to get government out of the way. The only way to get government out of the way is to defeat Democrats. The GOP, at long last, is ready to play hardball.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats believe that a renewed debate over Obamacare will actually help them. The Left believes that the only problem with Obama’s government takeover of healthcare is the branding. If only the American people really understood how great Obamacare is, they’d support the monstrosity.The fights over Obamacare, and liberty, are fights the GOP should welcome, and decisively win.

The legislative plan for the GOP is quite simple; Barry Goldwater spelled it out in 1960:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is `needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

For a modern interpretation “Undo It” works:

Keith Martin, a British Columbia [Member of Parliament] who is also a medical doctor, is calling for a fundamental shift in Canada’s approach to health care, and his ideas run counter to his own party’s policy on medicare.

[...]

On Monday, amid renewed debate about medicare, Martin released a strongly worded statement in which he outlined how the system must change or Canadian patients will increasingly experience “needless pain and suffering” while they wait for treatment.

“We cannot continue to wrap ourselves in the CHA, hold onto shibboleths and demonize those who are trying to modernize our obsolete health care system,” wrote Martin.

He predicted Canada is “careening into a brick wall” because of rising health-care costs and the results will ultimately be stark: hospital services denied to sick patients; previously insured services no longer covered; longer waiting times; and frustrated medical personnel leaving the profession.

Martin writes that instead of “tinkering” with the system, governments must “modernize” the Canada Health Act to allow patients to “pay for care if they wish, in entirely separate facilities funded solely by the private sector.”

Under such a system, writes Martin, Canadians could go to these centres and pay for the medically necessary treatment out of their own pocket or through private insurance they have purchased.

“By leaving the public system, they will be shortening the queues for those who are waiting. People using private facilities from time to time would also be free to access the public system that their taxes are paying for. Private facilities would act as a release valve and would in effect be subsidizing the public system. Physicians and other medical personnel would work in both systems.”

The arguments that Martin proposes aren’t new. In fact, they’re things that conservatives have been saying for quite a while now. However, it’s refreshing when a member of the Left commits to putting their ideology behind them and focusing on the facts. When it comes to healthcare, the facts are simple: Having top-knotch healthcare that you have to wait months or years for is no better than having healthcare you might not be able to afford.

Forgetting the obvious fact that all individuals with foresight in a purely private system would have health insurance to cover medical care, if the option comes down to remortgaging your house or dying, I think the former seems like a far better idea. I’ve written about my own nightmares in the healthcare system before, where I almost died waiting for [supposedly] the ‘best healthcare in the world’ here in Canada.

No one wants people to be dying in the streets because they can’t afford healthcare. Fortunately, that has never proven to be more than a progressive “line” not an actual reality in any Western country.

I’d like to see Canada go to an entirely private healthcare system, but allowing for private competition is a great step in the right direction.

Turns out, its having the opposite effect.

As reported by Bloomberg:

About 63 percent of businesses plan to make employees pay a higher percentage of their premium costs in 2011, said the Washington-based National Business Group on Health, which surveyed 72 companies that employ more than 3.7 million people. The survey showed 46 percent plan to raise the maximum level of out-of-pocket costs that workers must bear.

Obamacare shifts the power from patient/doctor to the government, is widely opposed by doctors, and takes money out of Americans’ pockets when they need it most. It’s no wonder that 60% of Likely Voters now favor the repeal of Obamacare.

It’s scary to imagine how much more Americans will be paying for healthcare if this legislation is fully enacted in 2013.

It’s time the government starts respecting the will of the American people.

A Sault Ste. Marie woman is outraged after she witnessed a man masturbating in the bed across from her in a mixed-gender hospital ward last month while she was recovering from a heart attack.The man in the bed across from her masturbated and the man in the bed beside her gave her “the eye.”

Still, Karen Lowe, 61, was more upset by the laissez-faire attitude of hospital employees.

According to Lowe, the nurses found it too “hilarious” to do anything about it. Not gonna lie, I’d probably be laughing too if I were one of them. The issue at hand though isn’t that a pervert got his rocks off to a 61-year old, but rather that the only reason men and women share rooms at this hospital is because of government cutbacks. This isn’t the only hospital to do such a thing either. Public healthcare kills, and all things considered, this incident could well have given Karen Lowe another heart attack!

Had a doctor had time to take my case seriously; or, had I been able to get basic diagnostic testing done in a timely manner; or, had the triage nurse not been on lunch break when I needed her; or, had I been prescribed the simple medication that would have prevented by body from forming blood clots; or, had I been informed of risks and told of things I could do to change what lay ahead, this may never have happened. One things for sure, public healthcare failed me at every turn…and I almost died because of it.

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Exactly one year ago, on August 8th, 2009, I was admitted into Ottawa General Hospital with an ischemic stroke, caused by a cardioembolism (blood clot) in my left anterior cerebral artery. The tiny little clot that changed my life was a by-product of a heart condition called atrial fibrillation (A-Fib, for short) that I had been diagnosed with about a month prior.

To this date, doctors are still dumbfounded about how someone in their 20′s who rarely drinks and has never done drugs acquired A-Fib in the first place, but I accept that flukes happen. I was having a quiet evening with a friend when I felt my heart racing, accompanied by serious chest pains and difficulty breathing. After several hours of attempting to convince myself that nothing was wrong, I called a public health service called Telehealth Ontario (possibly one of the most useless government services in existence) to see if I had a cause for concern. The official recommendation from Telehealth was go to the hospital by ambulance.

Upon arriving to the hospital, I was brought right into the emergency room and received in my care a level of quality that I have no complaints about. After several attempts to bring my heart back to ‘sinus’ rhythm, my doctors succeeded and I was discharged with follow-up. This was where the problems started. I was given an ‘urgent’ referral to a place called the Acute Cardiac Referral Clinic at the affiliated University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

No one was able to give me an accurate estimate on how long I’d be waiting. That being said, I wasn’t too worried, because I accepted the explanation of the doctor that, “this was probably just a one-off. You’re young, you’ll be fine.” I was going to be fine, no need to worry! For my own sake, I didn’t do much Googling of the affliction that I had been diagnosed with because I knew that I’d likely find some bizarre case of someone dying from it in some African village 50 years ago. The last thing I wanted was to be one of those patients who starts off a medical consultation with “I read on the internet somewhere that…” or anything similar.

I was a little disturbed that a heart issue with no identifiable randomly appeared, but I wasn’t worried. However, only four days later, I noticed the same symptoms as I was on my way to work. By the time I got to my office on Parliament Hill, I sunk into a couch, clutched my chest and called security to bring down an oxygen tank. I ended up having an ambulance bring me to the hospital yet again, less than a week after my most recent visit.

Once again, I received reasonable care according to my imminent needs, but was given little confidence that I’d be looked after in the long-term. Over a five-week period, I ended up in the emergency room four times with the same symptoms, each time being told that it was either a ‘fluke’ or ‘coincidence.’ One doctor’s brilliant advice was that it was ‘weird.’ Despite this issue only getting worse, my urgent referral to the Acute Cardiac Referral Clinic wasn’t available any quicker. I was able to get in during the first week of August. I wasn’t permitted to see a cardiologist, merely a technician who wasn’t permitted to tell me anything until a cardiologist had a chance to look at the tests “whenever he gets to it.”

Amusingly, on the last of these four visits, the doctor said to me, “If you were older we’d be worried about you having a stroke. But that’s not going to happen.”  Less than a week later, I proved him wrong.

This part is truly a comedy of errors. Feeling my heart condition start acting up, I decided that I would go to the hospital just to make sure. It was the sunny afternoon of Saturday August 8^th. Upon arrival to the Ottawa General Hospital (I should have been requesting frequent flier miles,) I proceeded to the emergency room and went to the reception desk. The rather miserable looking woman asked, “Are you here to see a doctor or a patient?” I was feeling a little dizzy at this point, and I didn’t notice that I had been dragging my right leg. I told her that I wanted to see a doctor, and she informed me that I needed to see a triage nurse first. The catch? The triage nurse was on lunch and wouldn’t be back for another 45-50 minutes. The clot had already made its way to my brain by this time. Every passing minute was leading to less and less strength on my right side. Unfortunately, my brain was too messed up to know that anything was happening.

The triage nurse arrived shortly before 2:00pm and motioned me in. By this point, I was barely able to use my right arm and was dragging my right leg from the waiting area to her chair. Every other time I had been sitting there, they had done routine questions that would rule out whether or not I was having a stroke. She didn’t ask those this time, I must have been fine then! I was then downgraded from emergent to the hospital’s clinic, inappropriately called the Urgent Care unit. When I got there and an electrocardiogram (ECG) was done, I was quickly brought into the emergency room, and from there I was quickly brought into the emergency room and treated for a stroke. To put things into perspective, with ischemic strokes there is a 4.5-hour window in which a miracle drug can be administered to break up the clot. I received this with 13 minutes to spare.

One mistake at one hospital is unfortunate. Two mistakes at two hospitals is a little fishy. However, a series of screw-ups and neglect that leads to a preventable tragedy raises enough cause to question the efficiency of the system itself. I’m not the only one who’s experienced this. This saga through the public healthcare system changed my life forever. I thank God it didn’t take my life away altogether.