Cody Williams, a Chicago physician, writes in today’s New York Post how Obama-style socialized medicine may have played a role in the death of actress Natasha Richardson, who died last week in Canada from a simple injury easily treatable in the United States.
Williams writes, in part:
Canadian health care de-emphasizes widespread dissemination of technology like CT scanners and quick access to specialists like neurosurgeons. While all the facts of Richardson’s medical care haven’t been released, enough is known to pose questions with profound implications.
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma — a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.
Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.
You may read the entire column here. Medical technology such as CT and MRI scanners, found in most every city in the United States, are hard to find in "universal health care" countries like the U.K. and Canada.
That’s why the Libertarian Party supports the proven solutions of lowering health care costs and increasing access through increased competition and decreased regulation — instead of the Obama plan to put health care in the same hands that gave us the IRS, AIG bonuses, corporate bailouts and Walter Reed Hospital scandal.
