The bad news for a Flin Flon area resident diagnosed with cancer? That’s obvious.
The good news? The community often puts together meat draws and raffles to ease the burden placed on cancer-stricken residents and their families.
Organizers of such fundraisers are rightly commended for coming to the aid of neighbours in need.
But their good work raises an important question: Why is it necessary?
Why place a financial burden of any kind on families dealing with cancer? Why aren’t all costs incurred by northerners travelling to Winnipeg or Saskatoon for treatment covered?
And while we’re on the subject, why are Flin Flon cancer patients who may not have a fundraiser held on their behalf placed at a monetary disadvantage?
In short, why isn’t Canadian medicare the treat-everyone-the-same miracle of benevolence it proclaims to be?
The problem goes beyond travel and accommodations, a familiar challenge for Flin Flon and area families that have endured serious illness.
As the National Post reported this month, Canadian cancer patients can face crippling financial hardship, even bankruptcy, if they are to save their own lives.
ThePost’s Tom Blackwellspoke with southern Ontario resident Monica Pope, who underwent three surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation to treat her aggressive breast cancer.
Pope’s expenses included drugs and hospital parking on top of a $23,000 pay cut from going on post-operative workplace disability benefits.
The next step was unsurprising. As Blackwell put it: “In a country that prides itself on looking after the sick, no matter their ability to pay, she declared personal bankruptcy because of cancer.”
Pope isn’t alone. It is now well established that illness is one of the primary reasons Canadians become insolvent. “Medical bankruptcy” is not just an American problem.
In the case of cancer, the cost of groundbreaking drugs – often thousands of dollars a month – are part of the issue.
Under Canadian law, provinces must cover all drugs administered in a hospital. If a drug can be taken at home, provinces are free to make patients pay for their meds.
Thankfully both Manitoba and Saskat-chewan cover at-home cancer drugs. Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, however, have “less or non-existent” coverage for those medications, Blackwell notes.
As much as Canadians love to pick apart the profit-driven US health care system, their own system can force people to choose between their own survival and their homes and savings.
In some cases, the best hope for those without a home or savings is to get on welfare. And if you’re denied welfare? Let’s pray none of us has to face that question.
Our health care system is great at constructing offices, flying bureaucrats to seminars and producing 80-page reports, but it’s not always so good at helping sick people save their own lives.
All of those meat draws and raffles that support Flin Flon families enduring illness are symptomatic of a larger problem that few people are talking about.
Blackwell’s proposed solution to cancer-driven bankruptcies is to ensure all provinces cover at-home cancer drugs and, more importantly for those in Manitoba and Saskatche-wan, offer benefit programs that better respond to cancer patients’ needs.
It’s a plan everyone should rally behind. Piling financial hardship onto sick families and individuals – whether in Flin Flon or anywhere else – should never have been tolerated.
Going forward, it can be tolerated no more.
