The "jewel in our socialist crown is medicare"?
For the contrarian view, see Steynonline:
"... But, what’s fascinating to me is that, no matter how inept the nanny state is, no matter how bad the health care system gets in reality, Canadians are still unwilling to give up on its utopian virtues – universal lack of access, equality of non-care. We believe it’s more moral to take poor government health care than to make arrangements for our own."

Read Steyn's full article entitled "Government Health Care is for Sissies" at:
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=23

Reference the poor, now dead 21 year old sap from Quebec turned away from the ER and treatment for acute apendicitis in April of this year (not 1954), 'cause he did have the "keys to the kingdom", the required piece of plastic actually on his person at the time. How unthoughtful of him.

Thanks again for the no-link. Of course, having lived through many family care issues, including the survival of a child at 24 weeks, I am quite qualified to confirm there is no bad health care system. Where is the bad? What bad? There is nothing, nothing, nothing backing the point of view that we have it bad. The only people who say we have it bad went to the university in Alberta, Canada's only outpost of the Chicago School of moral economics, and have been infected with some whacked out libertarian neo-con crap that means nothing but makes the richest province in the country starve its own population of the level of health care it deserves <i>and</i> can uniquely afford. Go ask the American waitress or the industrial worker in the states if they love the $500.00 or more bucks a month they pay for health insurance if they can even get it. Go ask the over bureaucratized medical professionals in the US who spend more time in a week on redundant paperwork than their counterparts in Canada. You spout myths and lies. And unsubstantiated ones as well. I trust you will have the ethical back bone to offer to pay your share, the real cost of your health care.

On the no-link, I'm "technically challenged", OK? And in this country, that means you have to "respect my right" not to link. Me, and the others so challenged, resent your drawing attention to what we see as this unique "quality" in ourselves. And that must qualify me, and others so "challenged" for government assistance of some sort - so we've decided not to learn how to link, despite any of your efforts to teach us. BTW, we see this as simply being your inability to "accomodate" our disability.

On the health care issue, ask the family of 21 year old Gerald Augustin of Riviere-des-Prairies, Quebec, whether his death is a "myth or a lie" dreamed up by the neo-cons. If poor Gerald lived in a country that gave him the choice and he or his buddy who took him to the clinic happened to have one of the other plastic cards with them (eg. the Visa card), he would be alive today.

So, if your kid needed surgery, would you think it right that he or she suffered while on a waiting list behind the 80 year olds who need hip replacements? Do you not think it "right" or "moral" to have the "choice" to have extra or other private health insurance (simply to pay) for the treatment at a private clinic?

I have explained to you a number of times how to create a link. Here it is again. Copy and past it to your wordpad and you can drop in links into it over and over. Give it a try:<blockquote class="smalltext"><a href="[your URL for linking]">[your text to serve as the link]</a></blockquote>I will fix it if you make an error.<p>
You are simply incorrect on the VISA card as no hospital refuses that in Canada. That is how US or other foregin patients pay while on vacation in an emergency - anyone can pay their own way if they want. Your understanding of waiting lists is wrong as well. Childern and hips would never be on the same list as different people do that work. Anyone has the choice to go to a private clinic as well. Drive on south. We are closer here to an excellent teaching hospital in Syracuse than we are to facilties in Toronto. Best of both worlds if I want to pay for it. You, however, would have us change the entire system for one tragic administrative error without showing how that same tragedy is avoided in your non-existant dream land. Add all the people off the system or hindered by the system in the country of your choice and compare those to ours. I pick ours because it works better.

Face it: for the amount of money spent on this Health Care system in Canada, its performance is dismal. We rank 18th in access to care in OECD countries. In Canada, 12.5 percent of the population aged 65 and over consume 42.7 percent of total health care expenditures. After this adjustment for age, Canada spends more on health care than any other comparable industrialized OECD country – 11.7 percent of GDP.

As for waiting lists, its not the surgeons ("different people do that work"), its the operating rooms and support staff that are not available, 'cause there being used for the 80 year old's hip replacement or bowel resection etc. That's why we have waiting lists (apart from the fact nobody wants to practice medicine in Canada anymore).

All other countries with universal access programs, such as France, Sweden and Australia, allow user fees, and some form of private insurance and private hospitals that compete for patient demand. No country in the industrialized world other than Canada outlaws a private parallel health care system. What does that tell you?

And I can imagine the conversation at the ER reception desk with poor Gerald was something Helleresque like this: "Well, since you told me you have a Health Card sir, we can't let you pay - but if you told me you didn't have a Health Card, we could let you pay. You'll have to go home and get it, but if you die in the meantime, you won't need to bring it back, will you." Catch-22.

It is great that you were there to get that quotation.

The US has the highest health care costs (more of their GDP than any other nation) and the shittiest coverage. I've had the privilege of experiencing both systems and you know what? Even at its lowest ebb at its most despised and underfunded, even in this state our system is better. SayNay wants us to change to that system which he imagines is better because of some book he read by Ayn Rand. Like the rest of the ideological bullies including Steyn, it's not a matter of pragmatics for him. It's a matter of morality. Socialism bad. Capitalism good. It's not a perfect world unless I can buy health care here like the Americans. Oh give me a break!

You mean he can retrieve from the ether conversations to which he was not present <i>and</i> reads Ayn Rand. Wow.

All I'm saying is that me and hundreds of thousands (nay, millions) like me living in this first world country don't want their spouse or children, to wait 12 months for a needed MRI - we want the choice to pay for it, if we don't want to wait, and to those of this apparently intelligent population, it seems stupid to be told you'll have to drive south of the 49th parallel to get one (although it seems almost certain I'll be able to drive to Quebec- that "distinct" society - for one in the very near future). And for what? So the government can maintain its monopoly on providing BAD health care?

By the way, socialism IS bad esp. when proponents of this system of socialist health care have a complete "stalinist disconnect" about it being the "jewel in the crown". "Waiting lines, what waiting lines, commrade". It's like the state saying you can't grow your own rutabagas to feed your family, for Chrissakes.

And the imaginary quotation of poor Gerald's interview at the ER would actually be funny, if it wasn't probably so true and sad.

You would do without to have. Amazing.

SayNay, there are two arguments here. The first is essentially: communism=bad
democratic socialism=communism
therefore democratic socialism=bad

The second premise (democratic socialism=communism)is based on the idea that a little bit of something (i.e. one or two social programs) is the same as a lot of something (i.e. Stalinism). But nobody believes this premise except the zealotous right. A little bit of something is not the same as a lot of something. A difference in degree is a difference in kind. Lets have a little perspective here. Stalin sent hundreds of thousands of people to work camps for saying the wrong things. That's why we all hate him. We don't hate him because he wanted a slightly more egalitarian society.

The second argument is this one: "...it seems stupid to be told you'll have to drive south of the 49th parallel to get one..."

This is the Humean line par excellence. It's not unreasonable for you to prefer the destruction of the entire medicare system in order that you should have your whimsies catered to.

Again most people don't think this way. In any case it's not the monopoly as a concept that we're after. We're not so enamoured of the ideal of 'medicare' that we won't allow it to be sullied by private clinics. If we lived in France the stakes wouldn't be as high because all of France's trading partners have similar health care systems. I think most people realise that if we open the thing up to private health care it will suddenly become a lot harder to keep our public system open and running, at all. For one thing Canada will be vulnerable to trade sanctions if it maintains its public system while allowing private medicare. It's the thin edge of the wedge.

By the way, I love the way right wing thuggery works: first you insist that we cut funding to medicare, then you say it's inherently flawed and that's why there are line ups. It's like the kid in the schoolyard who kicks some poor animal until it bleeds, then says: "look, it's suffering, let's put it out of its misery."

You're in trouble, now Peterborough Man. Lisa can run with this one.<p>Hey, I like the name "Peterborough Man"...like "Java Man" or other pre-historic forms of the species - yet likely factual. Maybe its time to pick a name nearer reality or I will just change your posting name to Peterborough Man every time you post. Anonymity is all fun and such but it is time to get off that swing set. If you have real reasons not to, please email me rather than make anything of it here. I can back change your posts as they become relevant to the real name of your choice.

How about Piltdown man? I've always liked that one.

All socialist states are basket cases or totalitarian? What more evidence do you need?

You guys take me back to Highschool when the smartest kid in the school was always taunted by the "slackers".

Sweden and the Netherlands are clearly social democratic states - so is Canada for that matter. None of those are basket cases in the slightest. You move beyond reason, birdwatcher.

And you would be the slacker or the bright kid? Oh I get it. We're bullies and slackers... Good comeback. Just because your mother says you're "special" though doesn't mean you're bright. Did the other "slackers" quote Hume at you too, poor thing?

[Ed.: Getting on the bad side of Lisa H. Baaaad idea.]

You miss the point that we're all "consripted" through a punishing tax system to support this monstrosity - you're right, we're not sent off to Stalinist work camps, but we might as well be esp. when you're working to when, July now ?, of each year to pay just your taxes. You'd care about this, unless, of course, you've spent almost all of your working life as one of the one in ten of every taxpayer who works for some form of government in Canada, or as a dependent of one of these "workers".

No jackboots here Canada, no, just tax auditors and collectors. No "dragging you out in the middle of the night" - just "assessments and re-assessments". We're not "citizens" anymore,we're just "taxpayers", the cash cows of society. How do run a country where only TWO of the provinces are "haves" and the rest are "have nots? When did BC and Quebec become entitled to "equalization payments"? How is this possible? Only in Canada you say? Mr. Hell, please meet Mr. Handbasket.

And the Netherlands and Sweden ARE basket cases - they know and their trying to make changes, but good luck to them 'cause they are filled to the brim with nanny state supporters like you two: "When you get it fixed, call me at the beach, I've got 6 week holidays to work on".

Thread now being hidden from recent comments for repetative pointlessness strain.

D'accord.