Among nations with heavily socialized medical care, Canada is reputed to have one of the “better” systems. But don’t tell that to Danny Williams, premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland.
Mr. Williams needed mitral valve heart surgery. But he found he could not get the surgery in Newfoundland, which is about the size of Tennessee.
So like many Canadians frustrated by their system, he looked south, to the United States, and had the surgery performed in Miami — even though he had to pay for it himself.
“This is my heart, it’s my health, it’s my choice,” he told The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada.
His father had died of a heart attack, and his own heart troubles were diagnosed a year earlier, without action being proposed by his doctors until it reached a “severe” condition.