“The Koch brothers are spending $6 million on a new anti-Obama ad; an ad featuring a Canadian woman from Ontario.
Shona Holmes claims our medicare system blocked her from getting the immediate treatment she needed to prevent her from dying from a brain tumour. She mortgaged her home to buy life saving treatment at a Mayo Clinic in the US.
Except she never had a brain tumour. She had a benign cyst on her pituitary gland. Very serious, but not life threatening and treatable in the time period planned in Ontario…”
Read the whole article about the author’s personal experience in the US and Canadian health system here: The Koch brothers lie about Canadian healthcare.
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It is outrageous that Canadians are being held hostage by the Marxist ideologues running the NDP, Greens, and Liberal Party of Canada. There is no reason we can not have a parallel system of private insurance to back up a government guaranteed medicare system for the destitute. The government makes the laws and can mandate coverages. There is no valid reason for the government using tax payers money to support a massive bureaucratic monolith indebted to the union movement. Many countries around the world have dual systems and provide far better care. Remember Germany has a far better system having 1 bureaucrat for every 15,000 Germans while Canada needs 1 bureaucrat to provide inferior service and healthcare for every 1,500 Canadians. Germany even has a Proton Centre in Munich. Read my posting on the anti-freedom “The Koch brothers lie about Canadian healthcare” blog.
American interest have been deriding Canada’s health care system for political and self-serving financial reasons for years. Nothing new. The fact that they got the facts wrong? Happens all the time. For various reasons (poor quality reportage being one, propaganda another) you simply cannot blindly trust what you read, see and hear in the media. Period.
Canada has universal health care, but coverages are being eroded. I hope we never lose universal health care. The health care system always costs too much money––until you need its services. Yes, you can get better or more sophisticated treatment in the US.
The problem is not universal health care. The system needs to be better run. But that does not necessarily mean a private, for profit system. Actually, new technologies should be greatly reducing the costs of many health care services, treatments and diagnoses. But there are entrenched interests, such a specialist doctors who still get exorbitant fees for administering treatments and operations that now cost far less than they used to and which could be performed by nurses or other technicians. Just one very small example.
Then there are those who stand to profit from private health care. They have been assaulting the concept of universal health care for years now through various PR campaigns and the like. One appeared in Maclean’s magazine and on radio and TV a few years back. It was full-blown, slick as oil PR campaign masked to look like a bona fide investigation of Canadian health care and the growing private system. I excoriated Maclean’s in a letter for taking part in such blatant deceit of the Canadian people. I’m sure they were paid well for their pages. Bastards.
@Robert Lynn – when someone describes the NDP, Green Party and even the Liberal Party of Canada as “Marxist ideologues”, I know I can ignore the rest of the comments as ignorant and misinformed. Not one of those parties – least of all the Liberals – bears even a slight resemblance to Marxist ideology. As a student of history and politics, such comments impress me as beyond ridiculous. My guess is you know next to nothing about the works of Karl Marx, or the ideologies that have sprung from his writings. So your comments are a waste of space.
What is the problem with a “for profit system” John? Are you not concerned about for profit oil changes?
I guess that you never studied Economics Brian. As for politics you seem to forget noted Liberal Marxists such as Pierre Trudeau, Bob Rae, or Ujal Dosanjh just to name a few. It’s funny how much talk we have heard recently about the need of the federal Liberals and NDP combine to unite the Left in one party.
For a good perspective on health care I suggest you spend some time here
http://merrileefullerton.com/