Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.See also this story on Canadian cutbacks.
Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.
The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.
Michael Vujovich, 61, of Windsor was taken to Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital for an angioplasty procedure after he went to a Windsor hospital in April. Vujovich said the U.S. backup doesn't show a gap in Canada's system, but shows how it works.
"I go to the hospital in Windsor and two hours later, I'm done having angioplasty in Detroit," he said. His $38,000 bill was covered by the Ontario health ministry.
Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.
Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.
The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.
Canada, for example, has waiting times for bariatric procedures to combat obesity that can stretch to more than five years, according to a June report in the Canadian Journal of Surgery.
As a result, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in April designated 13 U.S. hospitals, including five in Michigan and one more with a tentative designation, to perform bariatric surgery for Canadians.
The agreements provide "more immediate services for patients whose health is at risk," Jensen said.
(via Don Surber)
7 comments:
I'd like to know why we aren't billing Mexico for the services we provide their citizens...
Because the United States Supreme Court said the Constitution requires us to pay. Specifically, in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), it held that states could not deny education funding for school-age illegal aliens, which presumably applies to healthcare.
Ok...we pay. But why don't we send Mexico a bill if it's for their citizens? For services rendered.
Do we send Mexico any foreign aid? if so, we could always deduct it from that...! That would be a start...
> Do we send Mexico any foreign aid? if so, we could always deduct it from that...! That would be a start...
Mexico is already a basket case. That's why so many flee here.
I don't think the real issue there is the illegal aliens as much as the fact that they swallow -- hook, line, and sinker -- the full indoctrination program of the left taught in schools about the eeeeeevil white hegemony as well as the anti-corporate, pro-marxist economic agenda.
More even than the typical child-of-libtards they accept that crap without any thinking.
Re: illegal aliens...
I get really torn about this. Absolutely we should enforce the law. Nevertheless, the law at present favors people with higher education levels, and disfavors those without an education. Which one is more vital to our economy? If you live where I do, you might think - as I'm inclined to do - that it's the uneducated field workers that we need. I have a fair amount of contact with a few of them - hard working and striving for the American dream. On the negative side, they're mostly a cash economy, and doubtless don't pay taxes. Which is how they get ahead - as we could also if we didn't pay so much in taxes.
They remind me of what Americans used to be.
I should probably note that also because of where I live, contact with the dregs of society that come along with the good guys is non-existent. Population isn't high enough for them to lose themselves amongst the crowds.
I agree with OBH about the futility of billing Mexico--they use emigration to the U.S. as a substitute for needed economic reform.
As I've said many times, the problem isn't immigration, it's illegal immigration (and, to a lesser extent, "chained" immigration (satire here)). I have no objection to raising the quota for lawful immigration. And, unlike suek, I don't think of it as an "education" issue, but rather an "assimilation" issue. I welcome anyone who truly wants to be an American and will work to become one lawfully.
Agreed that the problem is illegal immigration. But if legal immigration isn't possible without a qualifying education, then the only way an uneducated peasant Mexican can get in is illegally. I also agree that it isn't an education issue once they get here, but one of assimilation. However - I ask you - how does an uneducated Mexican become a legal immigrant? As I understand the preference system, they aren't welcome.
I'll do a bit more research on what's necessary to become a legal immigrant - but if you don't speak any English, and don't read even your native language much beyond the 6th grade level...what are your chances?
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