Universal Health Scare #36: Canada Sends 14 Week Old Premie To U.S For Lack Of Resources

Written by: Uncle Seth The Noble on Sunday, June 28th, 2009

This one’s a heart breaker. CP 24 in Toronto has the details…

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature.

A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn’t follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States.

They’re having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

The Canadian Consulate in Buffalo is providing advice and guidance to the first-time parents, and their local MP, New Democrat David Christopherson, is working to arrange emergency passports.

But that will take until at least Monday afternoon and the situation is complicated by the fact the baby’s dad has a criminal record.

“I just want to be with her,” said Paquette.

“She only knows my heartbeat, my voice and her daddy’s voice. It’s all I can think about. I feel so helpless.”

This is obviously a horrific case, in which a child is alone without the presence of her mother in her first days of life. Both Ed Morrissey and  Michael Stickings do an excellent job of covering the personal side of this story, but I would like to focus on the economic aspect of this case. Is the Canadian government going to pay for the services provided in the United States, or is the family of this child going to be double taxed? This family has almost certainly paid for their right to health care and their government failed them. In addition, will the Canadian government cover any if not all of the expenses for the parents after having forced them to go to another country because their rights to health care were denied? You tell me how this case, both the personal aspect and the economic aspect are anything but compassionate as many Leftist’s claim when promoting government sponsored health care.  We pray for the well being of this child, but the proponents of big government health care in Canada have allot of explaining to do!

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Topics: Health and Science, Universal Health Scare

One Response to “Universal Health Scare #36: Canada Sends 14 Week Old Premie To U.S For Lack Of Resources”

Ed Says:
June 28th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

Canada sends patients across the border often. They can do that since they know the US will have an opening somewhere. That works well if there is a shortage in Canada but the US option is there. But what happens when there is no US option anymore when we go full blown socialist?

 

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