No room in all of Ontario for preemie

[there buster]

Another triumph for nationalized healthcare.

There's more than one form of rationing.

Quote:

Joanna Frketich

The Hamilton Spectator

(Jun 27, 2009)

A critically ill Hamilton preemie turned away from McMaster Children's Hospital is all alone in a Buffalo intensive care unit because her parents don't have passports to get across the border.

Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.

For Americans: Hamilton is a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada's largest city (Greater Toronto Area, five-and-a-half million) in the most densely populated part of Canada's most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people).

Buffalo, NY, by comparison has 1.1 million.