Taking Healthcare for Granted - Part II - Operation Mexico

As I wrote earlier on the blog at my employer's site (Taking Healthcare for Granted Part I) many of us, myself included, fail to appreciate the horror of uninsured life in a country without universal health care. That hit me in the face again recently, when Stephen K. Brust (the subject of the earlier article) and a couple of his friends began blogging about a trip to Mexico for a hernia operation.

On the Words, Words, Words Dream Cafe web log, author Stephen K. Brust and his friends write about his trip to Mexico for a hernia operation. As an uninsured American, the operation would be $30,000 at home, while he can have the work done in Mexico for $3,000, a mere 10% of the U.S. cost.

While he and they make light of the trip, how many of us would tremble at the idea of having, even a simple, surgery done in Mexico in order to save $27,000 because we can't afford to have it done at home?

Canadians take universal health care seriously, as indicated by the differing view points and money and energy that we have put into studying and improving it. Whether it is the more socialized version of health care, as outlined by the Romanow report Building on Values: The Future of Healthcare (PDF linked to title) which was prepared at the behest of the Canadian Government a few years ago, or the more conservative approach of medical savings accounts as proposed by Canadian expatriate Dr. David Gratzer in his book Code Blue: Reviving Canada's health.

A couple of years ago the husband of one of our booksellers was not able to get a hernia operation here in Saskatoon, because the doctor he was seeing didn't have hospital privileges. This individual waited six months then drove about 2 hours to a hospital in a small town to get the surgery done.

While such examples are typical of the health care horror stories we use to make fun of the failings in the Canadian system, they pale in the face of driving to another country, and not one we would consider synonymous with high-grade health care, because we can't afford to have the surgery done in our own country.