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Angry over medevac fee
No fee if daughter were aboriginal, says mother by Glen Korstrom
NNSL (Jan 28/98) - A ski-doo accident and a broken X-ray machine have combined to fuel a mother's anger over what she sees as a discriminatory health-care
plan.
"It boils me over," Yellowknife's Dale Crocker said after reflecting on
what she expects will be a $125 bill for a medevac flight for her
15-year-old daughter, Angela, from Fort Simpson, where she attends school,
to Yellowknife.
"It really upsets me."
Though the $125 only covers a fraction of the actual cost
of the medevac, Crocker is angry both because there is no working X-ray
machine in Fort Simpson, and because if she were Dene, Inuit or Metis,
there would be either no charge or a lesser charge.
But according to Donna Zaozirny, Stanton Regional
Hospital's manager of patient referrals, it's not a matter of race but
rather of different medical plans
"We're not going to hold this girl up," she said. "Our
primary goal is to get her here."
"We treat all patients exactly the same," she said. "But
for (medical) plans, there is a difference based on aboriginal and
non-aboriginal and whether you're a GNWT employee."
Deh Cho health and social services executive director Kathy
Tsetso added poverty to the list.
"If she's indigent. there may be other options (than
paying)," Tsetso said.
Tsetso said the Fort Simpson hospital's X-ray machine is
broken and a portable one was not available.
"She may have had to be sent to Yellowknife anyway," she
said, noting that some X-rays, such as spine scans, cannot be performed on
the Fort Simpson machine.
Dene and Inuit are covered completely under the Non-Insured
Health Benefits Plan, while a change to the Metis plan Oct. 1 now ensures
80 per cent coverage up from 65 per cent. |