Canada's health system is failing us, the death of a 44 year-old man in an E.R. waiting room is a warning for us all...
International data shows Canada is a health laggard, not a leader.
Why are Canadians willing to accept substandard health care results just because they get to say our system isn’t the American one? The story of an Edmonton man dying after showing up at hospital with chest pain and only being given Tylenol has sparked a debate.
Prashant Sreekumar, a 44 year-old father of three died of a heart attack after going to an Edmonton hospital last Monday complaining of chest pains.
The 44-year-old passed away on Monday at Grey Nuns Community Hospital in Edmonton after coming into the emergency room complaining of severe chest pains. Hospital staff performed an electrocardiogram (ECG) test and blood test which came back with no abnormalities — Prashant waited eight hours in the emergency room before being seen. He died shortly after.
What happened to Sreekumar is outrageous and the kind of thing too many of us worry about happening to our own loved ones. That when we need care, it won’t be there, the wait times will be too long, help will come too late.
I’ll say this about Canadian health care, when you can actually get seen, the care is fantastic, the problem is getting access to the care and the stats back that up.
That’s what appears to have happened with Sreekumar, the care took too long. The ECG wasn’t accurate - I had an inaccurate ECG which claimed I had a heart attack in my late 30s or early 40s when in fact I hadn’t. In that instance it was a better safe than sorry moment, but the mistakes can go both ways.
The story of Sreekumar’s death has made international headlines. It’s something that many people can relate to and it also speaks to a very valid criticism of our health system.
Elon Musk, owner of X, Space X, Tesla and more came out with a criticism of our health system when he heard of the story.
“When the government does medical care, it is about as good as the DMV,” Musk posted to X.
The post he was sharing linked to a video of Sreekumar’s wife berating hospital staff for not taking her husband’s issues seriously enough and saying they found her rude for raising concerns.
Would any of us acted differently in the circumstances?
Of course, after people like my friend and Toronto Sun colleague Mark Daniell wrote up the comments from Musk, many Canadians turned from being outraged about our failing system to defending it against this “foreigner” and Yankee. Of course, they forget that Musk, if he isn’t already Canadian, has long qualified for Canadian citizenship and would surely qualify under the changes brought in by the Carney Liberals.
Musk is also someone who went to Queen’s University, lived and worked in Toronto for a time and spent summers on the family farm in Saskatchewan. Don’t pretend he doesn’t know Canada or our system.
But as I predicted, the Elbows Up crowd were out in force to defend our system simply on the basis that it is not the American system and Musk criticized it.
“I agree it’s not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot better than the US,” @Rootly69 posted in the first reply.
“Now talk about the thousands of Americans who die at home because they can’t afford healthcare,” came the second reply from @MyCrazyTakes1.
Just so damn typically Canadian, defending the system that is failing us just because it isn’t the American system.
We can demand a better system without deciding to adopt another flawed system. Too many Canadians though can’t get past the idea that we either have our failing system or the American one.
So, I’m going to detail how our system fails us compared to our comparable countries in the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This organization measures and tracks economic, social and health outcomes in the 38 most developed countries in the world and while many Canadians will claim we have the best health system in the world, the data doesn’t back that up.
