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Garson woman faces $6K bill for getting sick in Alberta

Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas is calling on the province to step in and help a Garson woman facing more than $6,000 in air ambulance bills. Gélinas said Jean Wright received a bill for $6,380.
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Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas is calling on the province to step in and help a Garson woman facing more than $6,000 in air ambulance bills. File photo

Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas is calling on the province to step in and help a Garson woman facing more than $6,000 in air ambulance bills.

Gélinas said Jean Wright received a bill for $6,380.20 stemming from an incident in August while Wright was visiting Alberta. The care she needed wasn't available at the hospital she was in, and her doctor ordered she be transferred via air ambulance to another hospital.

"And then they stuck her with the bill, which in her situation, I don't see how she would ever come up with $6,300,” Gélinas said. “So she reached out to our office ... She had no choice. The attending physician said this is the care you need, and I will transfer you to my colleague who will give you that care. And I can't push you down the hall to my colleague, I have to push you into an air ambulance that will take you to the hospital."

But in an email, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care said OHIP does not cover the cost of air ambulance trips.

“Generally, out-of-province ambulance services are not considered insured health care services under provincial or territorial health insurance plans,” David Jensen said in an email.

“Similarly, ambulance transportation is generally not covered for out-of-province patients who receive ambulance services while temporarily in Ontario. As such, the payment for out-of-province ambulance services is the responsibility of the patient and/or private health insurance.”

So when travelling outside the province, Jensen said Ontario residents “are advised to obtain additional insurance coverage for these services.”

But Gélinas said very few such insurance policies are available, and it would mean anyone who leaves the province would need to buy extra insurance every time in case they took ill and ended up on an air ambulance.

The province's approach runs counter to how Canadians view their health-care system, she said, where no one should have to go broke because they get sick.

"This is what medicare is all about -- and it's covered for all of us," she said.

"Alberta and Ontario have chosen to scale down their rural hospitals and depend on what I call flying hospitals. This is what Ornge is ... it really is a flying hospital. It's fully equipped like a intensive care unit, really."

She's hoping the province will show some flexibility in this case, and view it as a hospital-to-hospital transfer, and cover the full cost of the flight.

"So I decided to reach out to the minister to make sure that it becomes included in the agreement the different provinces have as the cost of hospital care," Gélinas said.

"(Air ambulance) have become, by extension, part of our hospital system, and I want them treated as such so we don't keep getting more and more people facing these stressful bills.”


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Darren MacDonald

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