The Healthcare Conundrum

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Up here in the frozen north country we can’t understand the gyrations and hand-wringing that the idea of national health care provokes south of the border. To the best of my knowledge the US is the only civilized country that doesn’t provide health care for its citizens. It must be some kind of ideological paranoia about the thin-edge of socialism or something.

It was positively amusing to hear John McCain pontificate about this during the primaries: I know there is nothing more distasteful to the American people than state run health care.  He flipped on that one pretty fast when the polls showed that a majority of Americans  wanted universal health care.

Canada has had universal health care since 1966. The first province to have government health care was Saskatchewan where it started in 1946. Our health care is single-payer, another bogey man down south, apparently. The system we have costs about twenty percent less than current costs in the US.  Is it socialism? Who knows and who cares? All I know is that nobody in this country is bankrupted by medical expenses or forcibly ejected from a hospital when their insurance runs out.

Don’t believe all the scare ads that are running on TV right now. Sure we have problems. Health care is an ongoing expense. Some doctors and hospitals are obviously better than others, which is all that those ads are saying anyway.

Let me share a personal story.

In 1978 I was living in Queen Charlotte City on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Part way through my work day I became simultaneously nauseated and ravenously hungry and I had trouble lifting one of my legs. I went in to the hospital and was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. Three hours later a helicopter landed on the ball field near the hospital. That chopper flew me to Sandspit Airport where a Lear jet was waiting for me. Two hours of travel time and I was admitted to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. They yanked my appendix or what was left of it. Apparently it had burst and I was in the early stages of peritonitis. I was in hospital for six days. The cost to me of that little adventure? Zero. Zip. Nada.

Get with the program guys! Health care is a basic human right, not a political football. The only people against it are the ones that already have theirs. As far as the plaint that we can’t afford it is concerned, I can only say that, if a piss-ant country like Canada can afford it with a population of only 33 million people, then a country that claims to be the greatest society on earth certainly can. Maybe all health care should be suspended until it is available to all. That might do it.

The Canadian health care system is not perfect. Neither is the French, the British or the German system. That doesn’t mean the idea is unworkable. Sheesh! Take care of your people. If you can’t do that, what’s the state for?