Canada's "socialized" health care continues to get a lot of attention in the United States as the latter wrestles with how to fix a deeply flawed system.
The continued attention is somewhat puzzling, since the U.S. president has made it clear that his administration doesn't want to copy Canadian medicare.
Obama said earlier this month that the Canuck model "would not work for the United States, in part simply because we've evolved differently. We have an employer-based system and a private-based health care system that stands side-by-side with Medicare and Medicaid and our Veterans Administration health care system. And so, we've got to develop a uniquely American approach to this problem."
Which, by the way, is similar to what I wrote Aug. 11.
Yet, despite the president saying that's not the way he wants to go, opponents of U.S. health-care reform keep on trying to scare people with horror stories to illustrate what a terrible system Canada has. A terrible system with proportionally fewer dying newborns and higher average life expectancy, mind you, but it's socialist, dammit, and that ain't good.
Consider the wildly ill-informed words of Roy Blunt, a Republican congressman from Missouri who heads up his party's Health Care Solutions Group.
He recently told a St. Louis newspaper that at his ripe old age of 59, the government health czars up here would treat him as a second-class citizen. "In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn't get it replaced."
The newspaper did a little research and found that 63 per cent of hip replacement patients in Canada are 65 or older.
Blunt thanked the paper for the correction and said "I won't use that example any more."
I wonder what silly "fact" he'll be using in its place.
Why am I not surprised that Blunt, who wants a seat in the upper house, also refuses to acknowledge that the "birthers" are out of their freakin' minds?
That's a rhetorical question, of course.
I'm also not surprised that the insurance industry loves him.
Friday, August 21, 2009
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6 comments:
Stimpson, this is one citizen of the U.S. who WANTS your type of health care system. I am ashamed at the ignorance and stupidity of many of my other citizens, especially idiot politicians who are bought out by big insurance and big pharma, like John Boehner, Roy Blunt, and Mitch McConnell.
I have been harping for months about how people aren't dropping in droves on the steets of Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec, Vancouver, Toronto, or anywhere else due to lack of proper health care under your system.
Hats off to you Canadians for your vision and common sense, which we below your border seem to lack!
Thanks, Jack. I think denying your neighbour's right to health care indicates moral deficiency. Watching the news from the United States, I've noticed an alarming number of morally deficient people.
I am ashamed to say you are absolutely right. They have forgotten that the needs of the many far outweigh the wants of the few.
I heard Howard Dean on CSpan thgis moring at a town meeting. He explained how the US employer-based health insurance model evolved differently than the British. He said it went back to WW II. The British were carpet bombed and just had to pool medical facilities and services as a matter of survival. America wasn't bombed except in Hawaii. But during WW II, USA businesses weren't permitted (by law) to raise salaries to their worker because of the inflation danger. So, what they did was to increase mediac benefits.
Don't know how much of this is true.
A quick look at the Wikipedia entry on the U.K. National Health Service tells me it started in 1948, which gibes with Dean's assertion that it has its origins in WWII. Interesting.
Er, that should be "jibes" with a j, I think. As in "agree".
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