Are you suggesting that all patients in America that suffer a sudden accident receive top end care and are airlifted to the best possible facility at a moments notice? There are certainly helicopter facilities in Canada - hell, my little sister was once injured rather badly up at the cottage northern Ontario and was airlifted to the nearest full service facility.

Do you have any facts? I've been a ski instructor and GS racer and have seen some pretty horrific collisions - most of which require stabilization and primary care treatment before transportation to a hospital takes place. If mis-diagnosed -- ie. a failure to recognize serious internal bleeding -- the patient may die en route.

What exactly happened? 

Nearly all self respecting developed countries in the world have a comprehensive universal health care system in place - largely modeled after the Canadian system. The current US "non-universal" public health system already costs the US taxpayers $2 for every $1 spent on our universal system. Sure there are high end facilities with no waiting lists - but it's becuase the majority of Americans cant afford to go to them.

Further, I'm involved in American self-insurance for hospital professional liability. Do you have any idea the nightmare that is the litigious nature of the hundreds of counties in America? Doctors who cant practice because they're part of a group of physicians that can't get professional insurance... due to the excessive risk of a pissed off patient suing them out of business.

American health care system indeed. No thanks.

I can't comment on whether Richardson would be alive if the accident had happened in the US. Would she have survived if she had been elsewhere in Canada?  Would the attending paramedics have insisted that she go to a hospital despite her refusals?  By the time she chose to get help, it might have been too late, even with an air evac team.  Who can say?

But you raise the issue of US health care having speedier access. In some places, that could be true. But remember that the US spends significantly more on health care than Canada does per capita. If we wanted, we could choose to spend the same amount and in the process have a system that is better than the American system because we've stripped away a level of bureaucracy in the form of private insurance companies. (Side note: billing, profit and bureaucracy takes up a small but significant chunk of the US health care dollar that we don't have to pay here).  However, politicians in Canada have chosen to keep the lid on health care costs.  That means we don't get cadillac service.  This has implications for the broader economy. The US is having an increasingly hard time controlling these costs, and indeed, probably can't because there are too many players. So companies paying health premiums find they can't afford them, and either go bankrupt (because they have to compete internationally with countries with low levels of care) or dump the costs on their employees, or on the state (Medicare). So do I want to be unemployed and insured by the state, or employed and insured by the state?  In fact, more public money is probably spent on health care in the US (in absolute terms) than in Canada (although I don't have exact #'s at my fingertips).   Bottom line: the current US health care system is unsustainable except for the few able to afford a gold-plated insurance plan. I wouldn't be one of those people, so I'm glad that I'm in the Canadian system, even if I don't get cadillac service. But then, I don't drive a cadillac either. 

I spoke about this with a friend who lists volunteer firefighter and RN and nomination for The Star's Ontario Nursing Nightingale award on a resume... and my sister-in-law who is a respiratory nurse who does transports all the time....my question was what went wrong....

The answer was not just at all about air ambulances or even healthcare (and trust me they both like to complain about cut backs and lack of things), but instead it was about patients and our complete lack of information, not entirely what we like to hear. 

First, helmets....

Second, knowledge of when you need to be seen no matter how you feel.....

The call went out from Mont Tremblant for an ambulance at 12:45 or so.The codes meant it was a fall, possibly dangerous, and the (public) priority was 3, a few down from the most urgent one from the public. The ambulance was there in about 15  minutes. You go from that to it being not necessary because she said she was fine and another 11 mins went by.  3:00 pm and she needs an ambulance. It is what 15 minutes to get the ambulance back out there... So, we are 3:15 arrival and then a few minutes after 4 pm for arrival at hospital... Why so long at the resort? What was going on? I don't know. When they loaded her to go to Ste. Agathe she was a fall, now deemed dangerous and a priority 1, the highest. The other codes they rattled means she is fading in and out but ackowledges verbal clues but and does not know what happened, where she is, or what day it is....  She is already in trouble....

So, we are talking from 12:45 to 4 pm... it seems like nothing, but I am told for that type of injury (what I now know they call a talk and die) that is a long time. A lot can happen in that time... a lot of bleeding and a lot of pressure on the brain and in turn a lot of damage...

She went on the highest priority (hospital to hospital). Would an air ambulance have made a difference? It depends on what condition she was in when she left Ste-Agathe and what condition she might have been in the 1/2 hour minimum that even an air ambulance would have needed from Ste Agathe to Sacre-Coeur. It was 45 minutes driving. Would 15 minutes have mattered? I don't know, but I doubt it. From what I understand, she had advanced brain damage and perhaps was already brain dead at arrival. Would 15 minutes have changed that? No. I don't think you could get a surgeon to say that 15 minutes was the real difference.

It is certainly easier to get mad about and do something about than anything else, though. It feels better than having to blame someone's death partially on them not wearing a helmet and not almost fully on them not seeking treatment and refusing treatment. 

Deep sigh...

Such a shame....

Never let anyone tell you they are fine when you really believe they may not be.  

I am only commenting on what i have read being discussed in the USA.

Would she have survived in the USA.  Quite possible.

I think this accidnet could have repercussions for the administration as they try to push for a better system.

and while i agree that many countries have a system of universal access, Canada ranks 26th in the world, not top.  however our spending is 5th.

Europeans leave us in the dust regarding accessiblity, costs, wait times.....  Of course one of our big issues is geography.  Much easier to give great care to a population that is not as spread out as we are.

I know what is being discussed in the US. I recall watching it all in 1993 as The Clinton Health Care Plan was pitched and killed. Much of what was said then, is said now surrounding her accident. The same rhetoric that Michael Moore mocks in the movie Sicko.

Some then, as now,  point north and say socialists are lying in hallways and dying lacking basic medical care.

Nobody talked about budget analysis, it is not so riveting.

Will it hurt? Yes, but Natasha's accident just adds ammunition in the arsenal that was already stockpiled against National Health Care.

Her death will be used as an example to shape policy, instill fears, feed capitism... whatever the motive is of the speaker. It will boil down to their position on America having National Health Care more than any other factor.

Hopefully, the other side can counter that.

The truth lies someplace in the middle.

Many ski resorts in the US have airlift capabilities and CT scans. Ask what one of those babies cost. Why? Lawsuits. The resorts without them risk all on one accident.

Would she be alive in other places? That depends. Would she have said yes to medical treatment if a CT scan was on site in the resort? We don't know. Would they have ordered one when she was walking and talking and appeared fine? Most likely, yes, because there is no doubt she could afford one. If she was anyone else? Maybe not.

Do we disperse our CT scans too far apart? Yes.

Can they get airlift readily? Yes.

For us to do so, we would need to follow the steps they have Med-flight is privatized and done as a business. Do we want to? That answer will depend on the person.

Do they have tons more neurosurgeons and nuerologists than we do? You bet.

Would have a neurosurgeon just started drilling in the US? We like to think so, but not always. Doctors lose patients. They lose them because it is too late, they don't take defensive risk, or because they missed something, or because they simply lose them. Where one can say their machines, their specialists...  would have saved Natasha Richardson, one has to ask about John Ritter.

The US,  and what they will not provide for their citizens, they have put on employers to supply. They have made it too expensive to produce and compete and the economy bears that out.

In the US, the health care system is crippled by HMO's and insurance companies, cost reducing measures, the hospital as a business sector. That system is all about  payers and providers and very little about users.

If you can pay, you can get an MRI for nothing more than a migraine, you have previously been diagnosed with and treated for. My insurance company once did.

If you cannot pay, you can also die of something medically treatable.

Dare we ask what would happen to a little girl without insurance who fell on an inner city sidewalk?

There are tales to tell about people being turned away from seeing doctors and not getting tests even when they go to public hospitals that have allo the bells and whistles, rooms full of machines and specialists galore.... if they lack insurance. 

My step-dad was not even ordered a scan because he had no insurance and they never thought he might have the ability to pay for one when he had a mediastinal mass form Hodgkin's.  He had to tell them he could afford it and to get him one.

My mother is blind in one eye from a detached retina when the wind caught a door. No doctor in an ER thought they should do anything they thought she could not afford.

My cousin almost lost her son when an HMO call centre (no nurse, just an insurance person) would not approve him going to an ER (in her case you needed pre-approval if it is not a 911 call). His appendix ruptured enroute when I said we were taking him in anyways.

Patients not get help quickly? That happens in the US.

Delays in ambulances? That happens in the US too.

Unless I am wrong, Ste-Agathe apparently has a CT scan. As a town of 9,000, can we say they should also have a nuerologist or trauma surgeon? Small communities in the US also do not have neurosurgeons. What we have never asked is, with the malpractice involved (in the US and Canada) would any neurosurgeon take emergency call in a small community hospital like that? 

Will her death hurt in the US regarding healthcare? Depends on what voices they listen to.

Will her death hurt us or serve to help us in Canada? Depends on what voices we listen to and what they offer.

The US medical system (profoundly corrupt in my mind) is already starting a massive and hugely funded advertising, propaganda, and perception management campaign in order to protect the status quo.

The campaign will come from all sources, directly and indirectly, public and private, and will use every method. Truth will be a very minor consideration.

Get ready, the fighting's gonna get dirty.

This morning I was channel-surfing and on the American "Today" show a pediatrician was interviewed regarding the two babies in Toronto - one near inevitable death, the other needing a transplant. One will donate her heart to the other...and there's more to the story. But my point is that the pediatrician stated that in the USA, all organ transplants are anonymous to protect the donors and recipients for ethical reasons but IN CANADA that's not so. And they went on to act as though we line up our own organs all the time. In FACT, this is highly controversial in Canada as well. But these people reported as though it's a fact that in Canada we do this all the time.

The long wait times we experience in Canada do not apply to emergencies. As in life-threatening emergencies. Something messed up with that skier. But there are mess-ups in the US all the time too. To blame it on Canada is ridiculous.