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“Insurers can’t locate a bed if a bed does not exist. My heart aches for Stuart’s family and I wish I could have helped them.”

Photo by Craig Robertson / Craig Robertson/Toronto Sun

A longtime Subway franchise owner who retired five years ago, Cline and his wife enjoyed wintering in Puerto Vallarta. Cline, 71, had a pacemaker and needed blood thinners.

He survived a fall in Mexico that burst blood vessels in his brain Feb. 21. He had surgery to drain the blood and on Feb. 24, Mexican doctors stabilized him enough to withstand a flight to Canada.

He had a right to expect that our health-care system would be there when he needed it most. NDP MPP Peggy Sattler

But Cline was stranded for days in Mexico, his family says, and a bed was only freed up March 1 in St. Catharines after The Free Press first reported his plight the day before.

“(Being) here is a nightmare and we feel so alone we can’t believe nobody can do anything for us. My (father-in-law) is very weak. His heart is not doing well. He is fighting but I don’t know for how much longer. He (can’t) wait for a bed. We need to fly him back to Canada,” Alejandra Cline wrote early last week in an email to Sattler.

Photo by Brian Thompson / Brian Thompson/The Expositor

Sattler said she sought help from new Ontario Health Minister Helena Jaczek and those who oversee health care in the London region, the South West Local Health Integration Network. But a staffer in the minister’s office sent a reply that Sattler described as a “brush-off” letter.

Sattler later questioned the premier and Jaczek in the legislature, and though both apologized, the minister cast blame on a private insurer.

Cline wasn’t the first Ontarian with medical needs stranded abroad this year. David Ronald was badly hurt in Costa Rica this month and unable to return home to Hamilton because of capacity issues in his local hospital.

Only two weeks ago, Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP Jeff Yurek — the Progressive Conservative health critic at Queen’s Park — stepped in to help a constituent who needed a blood transfusion while vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

jsher@postmedia.com