https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/cancer-new-brunswick-medicare-1.5026696
A woman in New Brunswick may be forced to sell her home after undergoing an expensive surgery in the U.S. In normal cases cancer surgeries will be covered through provincial medicare, even if the procedure is not done domestically; as long as the procedure is approved through medicare. In this case a letter was sent to get the procedure approved, but due to the nature of the specific type of cancer the procedure needed to be completed within 48 hours. Because of this extremely small window of time the procedure was not approved and the family will have to brunt the cost of the surgery, totaling to $144,000.
My Opinion: I personally believe that in this situation the medicare should cover the surgery. It was unreasonable to expect the family to wait for approval considering how the surgery was basically life or death. The doctor in New Brunswick is partially to blame for this because he told the family that the procedure couldn't be done domestically, when after the fact the New Brunswick Medicare medical consultant said that there were centres in Canada capable of performing the surgery.
A woman in New Brunswick may be forced to sell her home after undergoing an expensive surgery in the U.S. In normal cases cancer surgeries will be covered through provincial medicare, even if the procedure is not done domestically; as long as the procedure is approved through medicare. In this case a letter was sent to get the procedure approved, but due to the nature of the specific type of cancer the procedure needed to be completed within 48 hours. Because of this extremely small window of time the procedure was not approved and the family will have to brunt the cost of the surgery, totaling to $144,000.
My Opinion: I personally believe that in this situation the medicare should cover the surgery. It was unreasonable to expect the family to wait for approval considering how the surgery was basically life or death. The doctor in New Brunswick is partially to blame for this because he told the family that the procedure couldn't be done domestically, when after the fact the New Brunswick Medicare medical consultant said that there were centres in Canada capable of performing the surgery.