Mascherine
mascherine, During the first six months of 2019, nearly half of the Canadian province of Ontario’s acute care hospitals were over 100 percent capacity, according to an analysis conducted by CBC News. Almost one-fourth of the province’s hospitals averaged 100 percent capacity — or more — over that period. As the CBC reported last month, “Overcrowding has become so common in Ontario hospitals that patient beds are now placed in hallways and conference rooms not only at times of peak demand, but routinely day after day.”
mascherine - That kind of crowding could make quarantining patients difficult, if not impossible, in the midst of an outbreak. Leaving someone with coronavirus in a hallway could expose countless patients and staff to the highly contagious pathogen. Canada has experienced this kind of thing firsthand, during the SARS pandemic of 2002-2003. Nearly 375 people contracted SARS in Ontario, 44 of whom died. For context, SARS infected just 27 people in the United States — and killed none. According to the final report of the Canadian government's SARS Commission, 72 percent of Canadians infected with SARS contracted the disease in a health care setting. Forty-five percent of that group were health care workers.
mascherine, The report laid the blame squarely on Canada's public health and emergency infrastructures, which were in a sorry state of decay.” Another government report concurred, saying the Canadian health care system lacked adequate resources, was professionally impoverished and was generally incapable of fulfilling its mandate. Single-payer systems don’t just struggle with pandemics. Every year, the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) struggles to treat patients during flu season. The British press calls this perennial disaster the winter crisis.
mascherine - During the 2018-2019 winter, one in four patients waited more than four hours in major emergency departments. That year those departments were so crowded that over 11 percent of ambulances carrying patients were kept waiting outside hospitals for more than 30 minutes. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP In January 2018, the NHS postponed some 55,000 operations because of an outbreak of seasonal illnesses like the flu. One doctor in central England apologized for what he called “third-world conditions,” including 12-hour waits and patients being treated in corridors at his hospital. Another physician likened the scene in his London hospital to “battlefield medicine.”
mascherine - The Canadian and British health care systems show just how hard it can be to battle an outbreak under single-payer. Let’s not replicate their experiences by adopting Medicare-for-all. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY SALLY PIPES