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Hillary Health Care: A Canadian perspective on socialized medicine

Posted March 20, 2008

 

Blogger’s Note: As a German expatriate living in the States for the past 20 years, I never fail to be amused by the reverent admiration Americans (especially American liberals) exhibit for everything European — especially social, welfare, and health care systems. When Hillary Clinton tried to ram "Hillary Care" down Americans’ throats for the first time back in the 1990s, I was wondering if she had ever talked to a Brit, Frenchman, or Canadian about their actual experience with their respective socialized healthcare systems — or wondered why so many Europeans and Canadians headed for the States for medical care.

The biggest irony at the time was that my father, a German citizen residing in Berlin, had fallen gravely ill in 1996. His German doctors had decided that at his age — he was in his late 50’s at the time — he’d qualify to be "maintained" to death with blood transfusions every other week. Resigned to an early demise, he decided to visit his grandsons in the States "for the last time". He refused to have my wife schedule an appointment with a specialist at Johns Hopkins with the memorable words: "You Americans always think anything can be fixed with a pill from the pharmacy."

But lucky for him, Americans are tenacious. We lined up an appointment with the chief of hematology at Johns Hopkins and physically dragged him there. Within a half hour, my father had 4 possible diagnoses with 4 proposed diagnostic tests that he took back with him to Berlin. His German doctor, a professor at the Charité, scoffed at those darn Americans just wanting to run up lab fees — but suddenly fell silent and ordered up a test series. One of the proposed diagnoses was confirmed, my father was put on immunosuppressants… and thus far has lived another 13 years (and hopefully, many more years to come) no thanks to the German healthcare system.

My little anecdote aside: I found this great first-hand view of a Canadian’s experience with Canadian socialized health. You won’t hear these kinds of things in Michael Moore’s schlockumentaries or Hillary’s proposals. And since Americans think the grass is greener elsewhere, nobody will ever bother to ask…

 

by a Canadian friend

Hillary Health Care: A Canadian perspective on socialized medicineBaltimore — (TFN): I saw on the news up here in Canada where Hillary Clinton introduced her new health care plan.  Something similar to what we have in Canada. I also heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada in his latest movie. As your friend and someone who lives with the Canada health care plan I thought I would give you some facts about this great medical plan that we have in Canada.

First of all:
 
1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month of $96 for Shirley and I to be covered. Sounds great, eh? What they don’t tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes, 55% of my earnings go to taxes. A large portion of that, and I am not sure of the exact amount that goes directly to health care our #1 expense.
 
2) I would not classify what we have as health care plan. It is more like a health diagnosis system. You can get into to see a doctor quick enough so he can tell you “yes indeed you are sick or you need an operation,” but now the challenge becomes getting treated or operated on. We have waiting lists out the ying yang some as much as 2 years down the road.
 
3)  Rather than fix what is wrong with you the usual tactic in Canada is to prescribe drugs. Have a pain? Here is a drug to take! Not what is causing the pain and why… No time for checking you out because it is more important to move as many patients through as possible each hour for Government re-imbursement!

But wait, there’s more! Read on… if you dare!

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