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My dad could still be alive, but he's not

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Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#301

Post by samdoesnothing »

canucker2016 wrote: post #199
samdoesnothing wrote: post #63

Such a tragedy, and I'm really not surprised it happened in Canada. Our healthcare system here is utter garbage and there isn't really any political will to do anything about it because "it's better than the Americans at least" (it's not). I don't buy that it's underfunded either, it's just sorely mismanaged and nobody wants to build or grow. Even a child could tell you if you increase the population of a country by…

Not 10% population increase in ten years, it was 10% population increase in 3 years. (An increase in immigration rate of 4x over those three years compared to the previous 20 years - makes the USA's southern border influx look minor in comparison) And the population increase wasn't spread evenly across the country...

jfc

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#302

Post by canucker2016 »

canucker2016 wrote: post #199
samdoesnothing wrote: post #63

Such a tragedy, and I'm really not surprised it happened in Canada. Our healthcare system here is utter garbage and there isn't really any political will to do anything about it because "it's better than the Americans at least" (it's not). I don't buy that it's underfunded either, it's just sorely mismanaged and nobody wants to build or grow. Even a child could tell you if you increase the population of a country by…

Not 10% population increase in ten years, it was 10% population increase in 3 years. (An increase in immigration rate of 4x over those three years compared to the previous 20 years - makes the USA's southern border influx look minor in comparison) And the population increase wasn't spread evenly across the country...

I was wrong about the size of the increase - after checking the numbers again, the increase seems to be about 80-100% increase in immigration since the pandemic started (an exception is the first year of the pandemic where it dropped below previous year levels).

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#303

Post by twodave »

jll29 wrote: post #273
twodave wrote: post #83

I feel this, but in reverse. My son could be dead, but he’s not. He was born on the floor of a trailer park apartment, not breathing. His birth mother’s partner called 911, who dispatched an ambulance. All rescue units for his zone were already busy. An ambulance returning from the nearby hospital to another zone heard the call over the radio and happened to be passing by. The hospital was expecting a DOA, but the pa…

Ex-paramedic here. Happy to here your son is fine. But either you mistold the story, or the paramedics made a mistake: ambulances are not supposed to transport a dead person - the paramedics are first to resuscitate and stabilize the patient, and only then initiate transportation. (I understand you may not care, because the outcome of their action incidentally was one you like.)

There is probably some nuance that I am just not aware of. As the adoptive parents it is difficult to get the full account, since we weren't present until a few hours later.

From what I was told, he was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat, and just kind of "fell out" while his birth mother was walking from the bathroom to the living room. I know that part is true, at least, because we saw the apartment floor the next day...

I think probably the paramedics were able to detect some faint vitals upon arrival. Since the birth mother and her partner weren't super reliable or coherent, we weren't really able to piece it all together until we tracked down the two young men who helped save our son's life that night.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#304

Post by tecoholic »

scorpioxy wrote: post #183
tecoholic wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I didn’t know that things are this way. I am a recent immigrant living close to the city and always seem to be able to see a GP on the same day. Is that because I have private insurance and I pay out of pocket anyways? If I were a citizen, I wouldn’t be able to go to those places (at least for “free healthcare”), and will have the same wait times? Or is it geography dependent with rural Victoria having issues an…

It depends on the location and it depends on what services you're after. If you have private healthcare insurance, you get to skip the wait times at hospitals and get a choice of public or private hospitals. For clinics, it's a different story and can get quite detailed. The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times. For some regional and rural locations, the wait times can be better or…

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#305

Post by tecoholic »

d0ublespeak wrote: post #167
tecoholic wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I didn’t know that things are this way. I am a recent immigrant living close to the city and always seem to be able to see a GP on the same day. Is that because I have private insurance and I pay out of pocket anyways? If I were a citizen, I wouldn’t be able to go to those places (at least for “free healthcare”), and will have the same wait times? Or is it geography dependent with rural Victoria having issues an…

With seeing a doctor we have two main systems that you can use and each will have a different waiting time. Bulk-billing and the fully public option has longer waiting times because there aren’t enough clinics/specialists or doctors, The reasons for this are complex but they stem from an unwillingness from prior governments to raise the amount the government pays for each service to adequately to support this system…

Got it. In India, I am used to the concept of Government hospitals vs Private hospitals. Things are pretty clear on how they work. Insurance was introduced a couple of decades or so back in my home state, which allows people to use private hospitals at govt expenses (premiums paid by govt), but it’s still heavily govt (free) vs private (paid). Here it seems like there are no “govt hospitals” if I understand correctly. So things are a little more complicated.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#306

Post by hartleybrody »

HNdev1995 wrote: post #232
jandrewrogers wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Seattle is famously one of the top cities in which to have a serious medical emergency. Very fast response and state-of-the-art care.

what other cities are good?

Boston. Was looking into becoming a medic when living there many years ago, and learned that Boston EMS has their own dedicated training and certification, with more limited protocols for EMTs since there are so many world-class hospitals within a few minutes drive from any point in the city. EMS has less to do but load-and-go.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#307

Post by torton »

trnglina wrote: post #110
torton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR chronic underfunding of the system, here's one example article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ambulance-response-ti... The federal government shifts the responsibility to the provinces, the provinces in turn try to download as much as possible onto the cities. There's not enough money for everything on every level of the government. This also reflects on 911/dispatch systems, where there indeed might n…

Healthcare is one of the exclusive powers of the provinces, as laid out in the constitution. There are things the federal government can do, such as provide money, but provincial leaders complaining about lack of federal involvement do so in bad faith; they would certainly complain louder if the federal government overstepped their bounds. It's worth pointing out that taxation and borrowing are also constitutionally…

It is indeed a power of the province. I meant the shift in responsibility for funding the healthcare programs. The initial health transfers to the provinces in the 1970s covered approximately half the cost; now, the ratio is around 22% (and actually growing in recent years).

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#308

Post by davidw »

gblargg wrote: post #54
neom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few docs out there on it, extremely extremely extremely insane/sad situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o

Some haunting cellphone video from the students' view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U-TQrxBOxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZuex_dnpBM (23-minutes of more raw video)

Yeah that's a nope from me. Not going to click.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#309

Post by infinet »

girishso wrote: post #81
markus_zhang wrote: post #73

I’m so sad to see this. For anyone who reads this, get a day, learn CPR, and buy that machine if your parents or whoever has history of heart issues. The machine doesn’t fix every kind of heart diseases but the trainer told me it decreases the possibility of death from a heart attack greatly. I recall that the possibility is lowered by 50% if you do CPR and 80% with the machine. It is not hard to use the machine as i…

Which machine? Defibrillator or EKG?

GP likely means defibrillator. EKG along won't save life and it requires training to read EKG. An AED has a built-in smart EKG that can identify shockable fibrillation. There is also automatic CPR machine that can do chest compression. However manual CPR is still light years better than no CPR.
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