Shriners (hospital) in Boston<\/a> looked us up and said, \u2018We think he needs to go here.\u2019<\/p>\nWell, that was a story too, right?<\/p>\n
Yes. I left the Kingston hospital \u201cagainst medical advice\u201c there. So had to pay for my own air ambulance to get from Kingston to Boston. The Shriners paid for all my treatment there. We flew out in a snowstorm and we couldn\u2019t land. Boston\u2019s Airport was closed except for one runway that was being plowed. We got security clearance and landed on it. It turns out, the Vice-President of the United States was in Boston and had to get out to Washington that night. So if Dan Quayle hadn\u2019t been there that night and they weren\u2019t plowing his runway, I would have gone back to Kingston, and wouldn\u2019t be here today.<\/p>\n
Some days, the stars really do have to align for things to work out, eh?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seems to be the case. And when I met the Vice-President four years later when he was on a book tour, I told him he saved my life!<\/p>\n
What happened at Shriners Hospital?<\/p>\n
Everything. Three operations a week, constant medical care and skin grafts. I was 165 pounds of chiseled hockey player when I went in, and the next time they weighed me I was 90.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
What did you see when you looked in the mirror?<\/p>\n
I saw that there was one person responsible for my success or my failure. It was going to be me and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
Your 20 years at Queen\u2019s Park certainly helped you understand how to navigate the health care system, how to get services for constituents, etc., yes?<\/p>\n
Absolutely. You have a lot of people that are in need and they don\u2019t know how to navigate a Goliath of a government. So they call their local MPP and I navigate for them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, you know how to do this, and yet even you\u2019re having trouble accessing health care for yourself. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n
Last December, I noticed that my right ankle was changing and its angle was shifting. And I went to my family doctor and asked for a referral but it didn\u2019t go anywhere. So, I needed a decision from OHIP for \u201cout-of-country\u201d services because I\u2019ve been unable to get the medical care I need here in Ontario.<\/p>\n
An ankle reconstruction of my right ankle. We did this in 2009 on the left ankle, but now it\u2019s the right one. And what\u2019s really shocking is that pretty much all the same players, all the same procedures and all the same obstacles are happening again, and it\u2019s 2026.<\/p>\n
Why are you unable to get this procedure in Canada right now?<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t access a specialist to get it done. Right now, the individual that I was referred to has a wait list of 18-to-22 months. He referred me to colleagues here in the city. But they have seven-to-nine-month wait lists just for a consultation, never mind diagnosis, X-rays, follow up, course of action and, of course, operating room time.<\/p>\n
What happens if you can\u2019t get this ankle reconstruction surgery for another two years?<\/p>\n
Well the prognosis is grim. I have outstanding medical issues with respect to most of my body being grafted skin. And with tissue damage comes potential infection. And with infection comes the possibility of amputation. The specialist in Toronto formally denied my care on compassionate grounds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
By \u201cdenying care,\u201d he\u2019s in effect opening the door for you to get more immediate care south of the border. Is that right?<\/p>\n
But I always thought if you need a procedure done in any province in Canada, and if the healthcare system of that province is unable to do it in a timely fashion, we send you to the States and you get it done faster and the provincial health insurance plan pays for it. Is that not happening here?<\/p>\n
You need to have the specialist that can perform the surgery sign the paperwork that the surgery is necessary and cannot be completed in Ontario. My general practitioner signed my application. And while it wasn\u2019t denied, it wasn\u2019t processed because the wrong doctor signed it. I just had to get the right signature on the paperwork. But because of his wait times, he couldn\u2019t see me and did not sign my form. So, I had to go to my local orthopedic surgeon who did my follow up care in 2009. His wait list is 24 months long. But the people in Chicago (where MacDonald hopes to have the surgery) don\u2019t answer telephones or reply to emails. So then I emailed OHIP Out-of-country but they do not communicate with applicants by phone or by email, only on the OHIP Out-of-country Secure Communications Portal. I applied in June for Out-of-country care and I heard back in August about this portal.<\/p>\n
It took them two months to let you know that this portal that you need to sign up through even existed?<\/p>\n
Yes, because up until this point, their inquiries and follow-ups were sent to me by mail.<\/p>\n
What do you make of all this?<\/p>\n
Well, I know the system, I know governments, I know the game. But I feel for the people who used to call me, who don\u2019t know what to do and don\u2019t know where to go. What\u2019s fascinating is that we\u2019re 17 years later (since my first foot surgery), we\u2019ve had two different parties in government, and a lot of announcements about hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in healthcare. And I\u2019m exactly where I was in October 2009 today. Nothing\u2019s changed. It was an 18-month wait list in 2009, and it\u2019s an 18-month wait list to see the specialist in 2026.<\/p>\n
Well, the changes have come in the procedures. I\u2019m going from a three-day hospital stay to a day-surgery for an equally complicated surgery on my ankle. So progress exists. But administration is grinding people out. And that\u2019s what\u2019s really sad.<\/p>\n
Is OHIP going to pay for you to go to Chicago?<\/p>\n
Well, in order to get the diagnosis in the first place, I had to go to Chicago to see a doctor. I paid for that trip. When my ankle was doing something it shouldn\u2019t be doing, I had to self-diagnose because I didn\u2019t have access to a specialist. So I went to my physiotherapist and spent six weeks working on my ankle at my cost, in order to determine this isn\u2019t soft tissue, this is skeletal. I tried to see my specialist at his clinic but he\u2019s got a 24-month wait list. So I went back to my specialist in Chicago. I could see him within two weeks. I booked the appointment online, and it was $800 US. Within four minutes I had a diagnosis, I had a surgical course of action, and I had an identified specialist, who said, I think we can get rid of this brace you\u2019ve been wearing since you were 16.<\/p>\n
How much are you out of pocket right now?<\/p>\n
Between physio, car rentals, gas, hotel, meals, traveling the province, traveling back and forth to Chicago for appointments, X-rays, meetings and discussions: somewhere around $7,000.<\/p>\n
Will you get that back from OHIP?<\/p>\n
You get nothing unless it\u2019s pre-approved. And I haven\u2019t been approved for anything. And what my story shows is there\u2019s no access, no support and no coverage unless you go get it. You can\u2019t have universal health care if there\u2019s no access to it.<\/p>\n
Politicians boast about our having the best health care system anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s the best joke in the province. But it\u2019s not funny. After everything I\u2019ve been through, I\u2019m not even in the queue. No one\u2019s waiting to see me. I have had no contact from any Ontario doctor that I\u2019ve been referred to. Zero. Other than the specialist who saw me 17 years ago who compassionately said he didn\u2019t have time to see me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
How much does your procedure cost?<\/p>\n
Do you have any sense of how much of that OHIP will pick up?<\/p>\n
Not at this time, but there\u2019s a really fancy sign near Lake Ontario that kinda cost half as much.<\/p>\n
Well, I think that was the Premier trying to remind people that it was Lake Ontario and not Lake America. But I guess what you\u2019re saying is, the cost of that sign basically could pay for half your surgery. Are you just exhausted with this whole mess?<\/p>\n
My friends keep asking, Why aren\u2019t you angry? And I confess I am a little bit. Someone once asked me, \u201cHow much would you pay if you had to?\u201d And my response was, \u201cWell, what would you pay to walk?\u201d<\/p>\n
Opinion articles are based on the author\u2019s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles MacDonald\u2019s nickname is \u201cThe Hero\u201d and it\u2019s not hard to see why. In January 1990, when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-351012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}