This whole debate reminds me of the reaction to Sicko (yes, I've made this point before, but it's relevant). When Canadian journalists - the only media to react negatively - dogged Michael Moore for protraying Canada's health system in too positive a light, he asked if they wanted to trade health systems with the US. At that point, they shut up.
A lot of us can post our horror stories about how bad things are in Canada. Parts of this thread verge on one-upmanship; who has worse stories? For sure, we shouldn't take for granted what we have, nor should we pretend we don't have problems. But while some of you seem bent on discrediting the assertions in the original article, there are a lot of facts that can't be denied. The US economy is in a tailspin, the subprime mortgage crisis continues without a single positive note, US banks failures are accelerating, job insecurity is increasing, and consumer confidence is falling. Combine that with a government that is spending money it doesn't have on war, a religious right that exerts a strong influence on government, and rampant, government-legislated homophobia.
Is anyone arguing that things are better there? If so, you're welcome to it...
On the Sicko comparison, glad you expanded on that topic.
I like to relate things in relative terms. Both nations have problems with health care, ALL nations have problem with health care delivery. Its not a perfect world.
But while you'll hear of the occasional person dying in a hospital in Canada because they were placed on some freak waiting list without their doctor taking proper care of the patient, you'll hear 50 stories of people in America dying because of NO care what-so-ever.
Earlier this year there were several hundred women in Atlantic Canada who were revealed to have gotten wrong results for cancer and some had not received treatments, while others received the wrong treatment.
Then there was a release of several southwestern hospitals in Las Vegas and El Paso, TX that showed that there were
tens of thousands of patients exposed to HIV and Hepatitis because of a series of bad policies (and reused dirty needles) that occurred around the same time.
How exactly to do you prepare a letter to send out to thousands of patients to advise them to come in for testing because they were exposed all because of medical neglect??
Both cases are horrific, both are rediculous. Everytime you hear of a horror story in Canada, multiply that by 50 and you have what is going on in American health care.
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BTW, here is an article for the Las Vegas hospital system that found the problem:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/16067972.html
EXPOSURE FEARED: 40,000 LV clinic patients urged to be tested for viruses
Syringe reuse at Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada 'common practice'
And I'd like to take a moment to state something about for-profit health care. When a medical "company" is worried about their bottom line, and not using fresh syringes because they cost too much to buy (which is the real untold reason why any medical 'professional' would do such a thing) there is a problem.
Doctors and offices around America "cut costs" by doing insane things, like reusing needles. Its a problem with our funding, because we in America don't treat health care as something that is priceless. We always put a price tag on EVERYTHING. That is something that is a disgrace.
These 40,000 people at a Las Vegas clinic is just the largest story, there was another story of an El Paso medical system doing the EXACT same thing earlier this year. And these are just the reported cases...