My God, you can write Kate. I already knew you were good, but holy shit!
I remember thinking the same things when it was my dad. The only hospital was now far away from his farm in Ontario. When I had enough, I picked him up and carried him home and waited.
I definitely wouldn’t have heldback paying for the V.O.N., who came everyday and were wonderful.
Lets face it, the facts just aren’t important to people when it comes to health care (and they never have been).
Now, I’m certain there will be people who argue that ‘any privatization leads to an American style medical system’ and regardless of how false this statement is I have to ask the question “So What?”. For the most part, in the American system they don’t have trucks running around with people calling “bring out your dead” because of lack of public health care, and few people actually get denied health care because of lack of insurance; mostly they just end up with large debts. I’m not suggesting that we adopt the American system, but I must ask why it is demonized so much?
I second Occam’s opinion above. You really should be getting paid for this kind of stuff. That wasn’t a blog entry. That was a column for a national newspaper (or editorial on a national tv news show, like, maybe, CBC.)
good work Kate!!
even used Pravda favourite statement in brackets.
“for profit health care” they use it in their stories like the rest of us use “the” or “a”
Sorry to be a nattering nabob but you overstated Saskatchewan’s health expenditures by $1 billion. The correct firgure is closer to $2.9 billion, not $4 billion (which seemed huge, which is why I checked). You did, however, get the ratios correct, 44% of operating expenditures, 41% of total expenditures.
Other than that, well done. A public monoploy means the “one big hospital” method of delivery, which means ever-worsening care for those in outlying areas. Sure we need the big hospitals, but it would be nice to have some local primary care facilities closer to home. Unfortunately everything in the current system seems determined to kill off that model of health care delivery.
a crystal flake
drops slowly
drifts confidently
through the lonely soul
of this world.
Our lives are measured in the shallow breaths of infants and the infirm.
I want every penny the not for profit health care system has stolen from me.
Great article! My theory is that the Vast American Neo-Con Conspiracy is secretly funding those who continue in the face of all logic and evidence to lobby for Canada to cling to our sadly outmoded system.
What a great example of the horrors of government monopoly health care just next door (rather than reading about Cuba or North Korea) it gives them neo-cons to scare the gullible American population with!
As a quasi-libertarian I hold the same dark suspicion about courts whose decisions make those who favor less government intervention look evil, such as the latest one that will inevitably lead to “for-profit” bus tours from Detroit and the convenient purchase of “memberships” to watch live group sex shows – participation optional and available. Amsterdam North will provide lots of fodder for the Jerry Falwell crowd.
An interesting contrast though – while it’s illegal to buy private health insurance to help avoid pushing up daisies, the right to participate in daisy chains is affirmed.
Kate, your writing is so good, your making the paid professional scribes look amateurish. Right on with the health care comments.
Couldn’t agree more . . the state monopoly benefits only the public sector unions that milk the taxpayers for “windfall profits” at the expense of patient care and service delivery.
An the unions love it because they get all those lovely dies flowing into their coffers without a penny of organizing costs.
Now that’s profiting from Healthcare.
I have always wondered why if our Healthcare delivery model is so great, why don�t we adopt the same system for our food supply & delivery needs. After all food is a sacred human right and it is immoral top make a profit from such a basic right.
But the I guess someone looked at the Soviet monopoly model, where the quality was bad, the line-ups went on for ever and people went hungry and realized it might not work here.
Since our Healthcare delivery system is just the Soviet food system applied in a different domain, should anyone be surprised that the state monopoly doesn�t deliver, is excessively and benefits only its greatest defenders.
Time for the wake up call
Bang on the money Kate.Excellent writing.Norm said it all.
The onlie tears in public health care come from the taxpayer who labored all his life to pay tax to wait in pain in a line up.
My Mother died as the direct result of stagnated diagnostics cues and scarce/absent specialty medicines and treatments….It opened my eyes. I’ll be damned if the rest of my family shares her fate in the Federally defunded and provincially mismanaged, decrepit public system.
We now have full private coverage and access to the best medicines and leading edge treatments in the US specialty clinic system….just like Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.
Many of us have horror stories. I personally know a woman who, 13 weeks pregnant, went into the ER with abdominal pain. On a Sunday night. So instead of doing an ultrasound, the doc decides its her appendix, so he takes it out. The pain persists, and the following day they do an ultrasound; turns out she had a miscarriage. So in addition to the trauma of losing her child, thanks to our blessed medicare, she’s lost a perfectly good appendix.
I don’t want a 2-tier system. I want 20-tier. Give me a choice of hospitals, doctors, insurance plans. People immediately point to the american system with their HMO’s. What we have in Canada is one monopolistic HMO.
When Kate writes of witholding payment, the real mechanism for that is COMPETITION. If your plumber tells you it’ll take 2 months to unplug your drain, you call another one. If your hospital says there’s a 2 month wait for diagnostic tests, you have no choice except to pray. Hail Tommy Douglas, full of grace…
One of the reasons we moved from Sask to Alberta is for better healthcare. If my kid falls off his bike and hits his head there’s an air ambulance that will take him to Calgary where he’ll be seen by a team of neurologists. In Sask, there’s the 2 hour shake-em ride to the city, where you’ll be lucky to find a neurologist.
In a monopolistic system, patients are a COST. In a competitive system, patients are valued as CUSTOMERS. That is the core problem with socialised healthcare. It’s very anti-social.
By the way, good on you Kate for taking advantage of your CBC postings. The whole country is asleep at the switch and they need facts for a wake-up call. Keep the facts coming. Be careful to stay on-topic though. The issue is the election; no need to resurrect every complaint from the past.
Brilliant essay, Kate.
Since moving to Canada from the US, every once in a while a wave of fear and loathing comes over me when I think about the time I would need emergency care. Your line about the “duct tape on the linoleum” sums it up perfectly. When it comes to the quality of health care, I DON’T CARE WHAT IT COSTS ME PERSONALLY but I want it, and I want it NOW. So if there is anything I need but can put off, I will schedule it when it suits me, and go to the US and pay for it and receive the best health care avaialable in the civilized world.
And to those that would argue otherwise I will ask, have you been to the US to receive health care? Didn’t think so. Oh that’s right, when things got really bad, you phoned the Mayo Clinic, right? Is that in Ontario somewhere?
I suggest every reader of this site copy and past Kate’s CBC Roundtable Post and send it to every Editorial Board in this country. BY God she has nailed it like no other Canadian has ever done.
Also send copies to Jack Layton and Ray Romanow those closet communists that keep crowing for this keeping this
“zero tier” system.
God bless you Kate MacMillan and shame on every Liberal and ND MP in this country who are offering more of the same.
Joe Molnar
Woodstock, Ont.
and Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!!
Great post Kate.
The facts are that Canada has one of the most expensive health-care systems in the industrialized wolrd (3rd most) and yet it ranks 30th in terms of hard outcome parameters. Why? Because the monopolistic system is not there for the benefit of consumers. Rather the primary beneficiaries are the health-care unions and the bureaucrats. Why are Canadians so afraid of choice and individual responsibility?
I know where I am the quality of care is borderline at best and yet there is little ability to change it because all decisions must go through the “regional health authority” (oxymoron if there ever was one).
Competition and choice put the consumer in the driver’s seat and the providers have to provide service or the consumer goes elsewhere.
Also the notion of “free” is totally false of course. The “public” system is financed through high taxation and mandatory insurance premiums (some provinces) and “user fees”. So free it is not. Canadians seem to be more than willing to pay through the nose for no choice or options.
And what about privacy of health information? In BC, any pharmacist can access your health record through the internet and I understand that soon all physicians will be required to input health information into a government database. Who has access to this information? What if someone had HIV or a history of a major affective disorder and was applying for a government job?
In the US NO ONE and I mean NO ONE can access an individuals health information without the express written permission of the individual themselves (HIPPA, the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act). And believe me this is big deal for health-care providers with severe penalties for violations.
Yet Canadians seem fine with the notion of “big brother” knowing all about their health and prescription history. Go Figure…
Only in Canada is access to contraband easier than access to healthcare, except maybe a third world country.
At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say “Well done Kate”. Your talent at the airbrush is exceeded only by your brilliant use of the written word.
As a worker in the health care world of the “Evil Empire” to the south, I have still haven’t seen the bodies dying on the streets that the Friends of Medicare are so worried about. There are other countries in this world besides Cuba and North Korea that Canada can look at for working solutions to the mess. some eyes have to be opened along with some minds.
BTW, I saw my doctor last Thursday and I’m scheduled for a MRI tomorrow. And that is only because my schedule was full on Wednesday. Gotta love that, eh.
The Fraser Institute presented a clear analysis of what needs to be done to the health system: treat patients as a source of revenue rather than as an expense to be avoided or delayed. Under our current system, modern diagnostics “waste” funding that could be spent on “health care professionals” (unionized dishwashers included). Queues are a validation of the need for more funding, etc.
The Fraser Institute article also asked us to imagine how air transport would look if managed on the same universal access/single payer model – huge queues for “free” air travel, “air care professionals” triaging passengers to determine whether their trip was really necessary, unfilled flights cancelled, “non-priority” routes discontinued, etc.
Fortunately, the unsustainable is collapsing on itself. Alberta is showing the way, as usual.
Excellent story kate: I have alway’s compared our health system & many other programs to the auto repair industry remember”you can pay me now or pay me later” the Government has systematically dismatled these programs and diverted funds to useless blackhole programs where they felt that it was socialy & politicaly correct. If you continue to neglect & not have preventive maintenance the machine will fail resulting in costly repairs. But then again they know that, it won’t be them that will foot the cost of the repair or blame because they have just downloaded the problem to the provincial governments. After the provincial’s have drained the taxpayer for everything they could get. They give it to municipal’s, which in turn say’s we have nothing so they have to tell the hospital to fund raise if you want new equipment. The hospital goes on a fundraiser only to find that my TAXES ARE DUE & IAM BROKE.
Excellent essay. Now I wish someone, anyone, would take on Jack Layton and his commie-style electioneering on this issue. Every time I see his Lenin-esque mug on TV he�s ranting �NO MORE PRIVATIZATION – KEEP THE �PROFITEERS� OUT OF OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM …. blah, blah, blah�. You�d think the guy was completely unaware of the fact the capitalist free-market system is responsible for virtually all of the wealth he takes for granted. How does he imagine his food, clothes, home and all the �stuff� he enjoys arrives within his purchase.
The only ‘contribution’ that the socialists have made is to impede progress.
The ONLY sure fix for healthcare is free markets.
I’m sure others have had the same thought, but what does Paul Martin do for medical assistance? Does he go to a family practioner who submits his bills to the Provincial Health Care System (and then waits, and waits, and………..).
Or, does he go to a special place where MPs and Senators attend for their medical requirements.
I’m betting the latter.
But, there’s no two-tier helath-care in Canada, is there Mr. Layton?
I think I’m beginning to understand, Kate, why Mark Steyn recommended your writing.
Mike, Paul Martin’s personal physician owns a string of private health care clinics in Montreal called Medisys. You can find out more about them by searching for ITScam.
Now, consider this. I have from decades of good fortune and hard work accumulated a cache of unused after-tax dollars. If I decide to spend them on medical treatement for me, I will, even if I have to leave the country, and you can’t stop me.
I would prefer to not leave the country. I would prefer to spend my after tax savings, if necessary, on Canada’s doctors and nurses, not on America’s.
Why is it that Mr. Martin & Mr. Layton want to prevent me from spending my life’s profits in Canada?
Excellent post as usual Kate. CBC will be lamenting that they asked you to submit as you are putting their writers to shame.
We just had a gut-wrenching experience with our daughter and our great Canadian Health Care System.
She waited 31/2 months for a diagnostic ultrasound which indicated a tumor on her ovary. Faced with another long wait for a CAT scan we were prepared to send her to Fargo, North Dakota for an immediate scan at our expense. The doctor in question told us that Canadian Radiologists are now saying that American CAT scan results are unreliable and the test might need repeating here in Canada. He confided that he did not know how much of that complaint was sour grapes on behalf of the radiologists. He also suggested that if we took her to the US that we should only go to the Mayo Clinic(Chretien’s clinic of choice)to ensure the results would be accepted in Canada.
In the end we did not send her to the US and she waited another month for surgury which thankfully indicated her problem was a non- malignant tumor.
The results could have been deadly due to the long delays for diagnostics in our system and we would have never forgiven ourselves for not sending her to the US for immediate care.
Alex
Winnipeg
As a doctor my comment is …….well done!
Where Americans pay with their credit cards , we pay with our tax returns.
I have an overseas insurance plan to prevent my family becoming involved in the “wait lists”
as I refuse to queue jump.
I live in Alberta and am unlikely to see any leader come here in the next 30 days. can someone ask Jack
if there are any for profit abortion clinics?
Let me be a Cassandra, here, for a moment. The results of the current election are a foregone conclusion: Liberals by a nose or by a neck. Why? Not because Steven Harper is the anti-christ or the spawn of Satan or George Bush’s best pal but only because he comes from Western Canada, worse, from Alberta. Ontario will never elect a leader from the West, and certainly not from Alberta! Think of the country this way: Ontario is really part of Quebec; the Maritimes are an Ottawa fief, Nfdld is sailing off on its own; that leaves West as the only Canada.
Thing is he’s not from the west. born and raised in Ontario, went to school in liberal Toronto. Moved to Alberta when he was 18. Street poll on cpac recently asked the question where do think harper was born ?. Alberta, Ontario or PEI, 90% respondents answered Alberta. Just because you moved to another province in Canada to look for work, education or whatever the case may be. You are still a Canadian & should be proud of it.
I am Canadian(by passport), and not the least bit proud anymore.
the libs have ripped the guts out of the foundations of the country and left a sniveling , whining, gutless pogey collecting bunch of sycophants.
My God, you can write Kate. I already knew you were good, but holy shit!
I remember thinking the same things when it was my dad. The only hospital was now far away from his farm in Ontario. When I had enough, I picked him up and carried him home and waited.
I definitely wouldn’t have heldback paying for the V.O.N., who came everyday and were wonderful.
Lets face it, the facts just aren’t important to people when it comes to health care (and they never have been).
Now, I’m certain there will be people who argue that ‘any privatization leads to an American style medical system’ and regardless of how false this statement is I have to ask the question “So What?”. For the most part, in the American system they don’t have trucks running around with people calling “bring out your dead” because of lack of public health care, and few people actually get denied health care because of lack of insurance; mostly they just end up with large debts. I’m not suggesting that we adopt the American system, but I must ask why it is demonized so much?
Check out this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0787952583/qid=1135266474/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/701-6894185-9001140
It works in Switzerland.
I second Occam’s opinion above. You really should be getting paid for this kind of stuff. That wasn’t a blog entry. That was a column for a national newspaper (or editorial on a national tv news show, like, maybe, CBC.)
good work Kate!!
even used Pravda favourite statement in brackets.
“for profit health care” they use it in their stories like the rest of us use “the” or “a”
Sorry to be a nattering nabob but you overstated Saskatchewan’s health expenditures by $1 billion. The correct firgure is closer to $2.9 billion, not $4 billion (which seemed huge, which is why I checked). You did, however, get the ratios correct, 44% of operating expenditures, 41% of total expenditures.
Other than that, well done. A public monoploy means the “one big hospital” method of delivery, which means ever-worsening care for those in outlying areas. Sure we need the big hospitals, but it would be nice to have some local primary care facilities closer to home. Unfortunately everything in the current system seems determined to kill off that model of health care delivery.
a crystal flake
drops slowly
drifts confidently
through the lonely soul
of this world.
Our lives are measured in the shallow breaths of infants and the infirm.
I want every penny the not for profit health care system has stolen from me.
Great article! My theory is that the Vast American Neo-Con Conspiracy is secretly funding those who continue in the face of all logic and evidence to lobby for Canada to cling to our sadly outmoded system.
What a great example of the horrors of government monopoly health care just next door (rather than reading about Cuba or North Korea) it gives them neo-cons to scare the gullible American population with!
As a quasi-libertarian I hold the same dark suspicion about courts whose decisions make those who favor less government intervention look evil, such as the latest one that will inevitably lead to “for-profit” bus tours from Detroit and the convenient purchase of “memberships” to watch live group sex shows – participation optional and available. Amsterdam North will provide lots of fodder for the Jerry Falwell crowd.
An interesting contrast though – while it’s illegal to buy private health insurance to help avoid pushing up daisies, the right to participate in daisy chains is affirmed.
Kate, your writing is so good, your making the paid professional scribes look amateurish. Right on with the health care comments.
Couldn’t agree more . . the state monopoly benefits only the public sector unions that milk the taxpayers for “windfall profits” at the expense of patient care and service delivery.
An the unions love it because they get all those lovely dies flowing into their coffers without a penny of organizing costs.
Now that’s profiting from Healthcare.
I have always wondered why if our Healthcare delivery model is so great, why don�t we adopt the same system for our food supply & delivery needs. After all food is a sacred human right and it is immoral top make a profit from such a basic right.
But the I guess someone looked at the Soviet monopoly model, where the quality was bad, the line-ups went on for ever and people went hungry and realized it might not work here.
Since our Healthcare delivery system is just the Soviet food system applied in a different domain, should anyone be surprised that the state monopoly doesn�t deliver, is excessively and benefits only its greatest defenders.
Time for the wake up call
Bang on the money Kate.Excellent writing.Norm said it all.
The onlie tears in public health care come from the taxpayer who labored all his life to pay tax to wait in pain in a line up.
My Mother died as the direct result of stagnated diagnostics cues and scarce/absent specialty medicines and treatments….It opened my eyes. I’ll be damned if the rest of my family shares her fate in the Federally defunded and provincially mismanaged, decrepit public system.
We now have full private coverage and access to the best medicines and leading edge treatments in the US specialty clinic system….just like Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.
Many of us have horror stories. I personally know a woman who, 13 weeks pregnant, went into the ER with abdominal pain. On a Sunday night. So instead of doing an ultrasound, the doc decides its her appendix, so he takes it out. The pain persists, and the following day they do an ultrasound; turns out she had a miscarriage. So in addition to the trauma of losing her child, thanks to our blessed medicare, she’s lost a perfectly good appendix.
I don’t want a 2-tier system. I want 20-tier. Give me a choice of hospitals, doctors, insurance plans. People immediately point to the american system with their HMO’s. What we have in Canada is one monopolistic HMO.
When Kate writes of witholding payment, the real mechanism for that is COMPETITION. If your plumber tells you it’ll take 2 months to unplug your drain, you call another one. If your hospital says there’s a 2 month wait for diagnostic tests, you have no choice except to pray. Hail Tommy Douglas, full of grace…
One of the reasons we moved from Sask to Alberta is for better healthcare. If my kid falls off his bike and hits his head there’s an air ambulance that will take him to Calgary where he’ll be seen by a team of neurologists. In Sask, there’s the 2 hour shake-em ride to the city, where you’ll be lucky to find a neurologist.
In a monopolistic system, patients are a COST. In a competitive system, patients are valued as CUSTOMERS. That is the core problem with socialised healthcare. It’s very anti-social.
By the way, good on you Kate for taking advantage of your CBC postings. The whole country is asleep at the switch and they need facts for a wake-up call. Keep the facts coming. Be careful to stay on-topic though. The issue is the election; no need to resurrect every complaint from the past.
Brilliant essay, Kate.
Since moving to Canada from the US, every once in a while a wave of fear and loathing comes over me when I think about the time I would need emergency care. Your line about the “duct tape on the linoleum” sums it up perfectly. When it comes to the quality of health care, I DON’T CARE WHAT IT COSTS ME PERSONALLY but I want it, and I want it NOW. So if there is anything I need but can put off, I will schedule it when it suits me, and go to the US and pay for it and receive the best health care avaialable in the civilized world.
And to those that would argue otherwise I will ask, have you been to the US to receive health care? Didn’t think so. Oh that’s right, when things got really bad, you phoned the Mayo Clinic, right? Is that in Ontario somewhere?
I suggest every reader of this site copy and past Kate’s CBC Roundtable Post and send it to every Editorial Board in this country. BY God she has nailed it like no other Canadian has ever done.
Also send copies to Jack Layton and Ray Romanow those closet communists that keep crowing for this keeping this
“zero tier” system.
God bless you Kate MacMillan and shame on every Liberal and ND MP in this country who are offering more of the same.
Joe Molnar
Woodstock, Ont.
and Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!!
Great post Kate.
The facts are that Canada has one of the most expensive health-care systems in the industrialized wolrd (3rd most) and yet it ranks 30th in terms of hard outcome parameters. Why? Because the monopolistic system is not there for the benefit of consumers. Rather the primary beneficiaries are the health-care unions and the bureaucrats. Why are Canadians so afraid of choice and individual responsibility?
I know where I am the quality of care is borderline at best and yet there is little ability to change it because all decisions must go through the “regional health authority” (oxymoron if there ever was one).
Competition and choice put the consumer in the driver’s seat and the providers have to provide service or the consumer goes elsewhere.
Also the notion of “free” is totally false of course. The “public” system is financed through high taxation and mandatory insurance premiums (some provinces) and “user fees”. So free it is not. Canadians seem to be more than willing to pay through the nose for no choice or options.
And what about privacy of health information? In BC, any pharmacist can access your health record through the internet and I understand that soon all physicians will be required to input health information into a government database. Who has access to this information? What if someone had HIV or a history of a major affective disorder and was applying for a government job?
In the US NO ONE and I mean NO ONE can access an individuals health information without the express written permission of the individual themselves (HIPPA, the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act). And believe me this is big deal for health-care providers with severe penalties for violations.
Yet Canadians seem fine with the notion of “big brother” knowing all about their health and prescription history. Go Figure…
Only in Canada is access to contraband easier than access to healthcare, except maybe a third world country.
At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say “Well done Kate”. Your talent at the airbrush is exceeded only by your brilliant use of the written word.
As a worker in the health care world of the “Evil Empire” to the south, I have still haven’t seen the bodies dying on the streets that the Friends of Medicare are so worried about. There are other countries in this world besides Cuba and North Korea that Canada can look at for working solutions to the mess. some eyes have to be opened along with some minds.
BTW, I saw my doctor last Thursday and I’m scheduled for a MRI tomorrow. And that is only because my schedule was full on Wednesday. Gotta love that, eh.
The Fraser Institute presented a clear analysis of what needs to be done to the health system: treat patients as a source of revenue rather than as an expense to be avoided or delayed. Under our current system, modern diagnostics “waste” funding that could be spent on “health care professionals” (unionized dishwashers included). Queues are a validation of the need for more funding, etc.
The Fraser Institute article also asked us to imagine how air transport would look if managed on the same universal access/single payer model – huge queues for “free” air travel, “air care professionals” triaging passengers to determine whether their trip was really necessary, unfilled flights cancelled, “non-priority” routes discontinued, etc.
Fortunately, the unsustainable is collapsing on itself. Alberta is showing the way, as usual.
Excellent story kate: I have alway’s compared our health system & many other programs to the auto repair industry remember”you can pay me now or pay me later” the Government has systematically dismatled these programs and diverted funds to useless blackhole programs where they felt that it was socialy & politicaly correct. If you continue to neglect & not have preventive maintenance the machine will fail resulting in costly repairs. But then again they know that, it won’t be them that will foot the cost of the repair or blame because they have just downloaded the problem to the provincial governments. After the provincial’s have drained the taxpayer for everything they could get. They give it to municipal’s, which in turn say’s we have nothing so they have to tell the hospital to fund raise if you want new equipment. The hospital goes on a fundraiser only to find that my TAXES ARE DUE & IAM BROKE.
Excellent essay. Now I wish someone, anyone, would take on Jack Layton and his commie-style electioneering on this issue. Every time I see his Lenin-esque mug on TV he�s ranting �NO MORE PRIVATIZATION – KEEP THE �PROFITEERS� OUT OF OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM …. blah, blah, blah�. You�d think the guy was completely unaware of the fact the capitalist free-market system is responsible for virtually all of the wealth he takes for granted. How does he imagine his food, clothes, home and all the �stuff� he enjoys arrives within his purchase.
The only ‘contribution’ that the socialists have made is to impede progress.
The ONLY sure fix for healthcare is free markets.
I’m sure others have had the same thought, but what does Paul Martin do for medical assistance? Does he go to a family practioner who submits his bills to the Provincial Health Care System (and then waits, and waits, and………..).
Or, does he go to a special place where MPs and Senators attend for their medical requirements.
I’m betting the latter.
But, there’s no two-tier helath-care in Canada, is there Mr. Layton?
I think I’m beginning to understand, Kate, why Mark Steyn recommended your writing.
Mike, Paul Martin’s personal physician owns a string of private health care clinics in Montreal called Medisys. You can find out more about them by searching for ITScam.
Now, consider this. I have from decades of good fortune and hard work accumulated a cache of unused after-tax dollars. If I decide to spend them on medical treatement for me, I will, even if I have to leave the country, and you can’t stop me.
I would prefer to not leave the country. I would prefer to spend my after tax savings, if necessary, on Canada’s doctors and nurses, not on America’s.
Why is it that Mr. Martin & Mr. Layton want to prevent me from spending my life’s profits in Canada?
Excellent post as usual Kate. CBC will be lamenting that they asked you to submit as you are putting their writers to shame.
We just had a gut-wrenching experience with our daughter and our great Canadian Health Care System.
She waited 31/2 months for a diagnostic ultrasound which indicated a tumor on her ovary. Faced with another long wait for a CAT scan we were prepared to send her to Fargo, North Dakota for an immediate scan at our expense. The doctor in question told us that Canadian Radiologists are now saying that American CAT scan results are unreliable and the test might need repeating here in Canada. He confided that he did not know how much of that complaint was sour grapes on behalf of the radiologists. He also suggested that if we took her to the US that we should only go to the Mayo Clinic(Chretien’s clinic of choice)to ensure the results would be accepted in Canada.
In the end we did not send her to the US and she waited another month for surgury which thankfully indicated her problem was a non- malignant tumor.
The results could have been deadly due to the long delays for diagnostics in our system and we would have never forgiven ourselves for not sending her to the US for immediate care.
Alex
Winnipeg
As a doctor my comment is …….well done!
Where Americans pay with their credit cards , we pay with our tax returns.
I have an overseas insurance plan to prevent my family becoming involved in the “wait lists”
as I refuse to queue jump.
I live in Alberta and am unlikely to see any leader come here in the next 30 days. can someone ask Jack
if there are any for profit abortion clinics?
Let me be a Cassandra, here, for a moment. The results of the current election are a foregone conclusion: Liberals by a nose or by a neck. Why? Not because Steven Harper is the anti-christ or the spawn of Satan or George Bush’s best pal but only because he comes from Western Canada, worse, from Alberta. Ontario will never elect a leader from the West, and certainly not from Alberta! Think of the country this way: Ontario is really part of Quebec; the Maritimes are an Ottawa fief, Nfdld is sailing off on its own; that leaves West as the only Canada.
Thing is he’s not from the west. born and raised in Ontario, went to school in liberal Toronto. Moved to Alberta when he was 18. Street poll on cpac recently asked the question where do think harper was born ?. Alberta, Ontario or PEI, 90% respondents answered Alberta. Just because you moved to another province in Canada to look for work, education or whatever the case may be. You are still a Canadian & should be proud of it.
I am Canadian(by passport), and not the least bit proud anymore.
the libs have ripped the guts out of the foundations of the country and left a sniveling , whining, gutless pogey collecting bunch of sycophants.
health insuranceshealth insurances sayinghealth care insurancesfamily health insuranceshealth insurances small businessutah family health insurances