Canadian and American health care systems compared

[Lucy Goosey]

An episode of a Canadian current events show that looks at healthcare in both countries from both sides.

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?video?TAWSP_Dbt_20090914_779613_0

One panelist is an American academic who strongly supports medicare, another is a Canadian in favour of privatization.

It is nearly an hour long, but if you have the time there is a lot of good information in there, and it is amusing to see the pro-privatization guy get his ass handed to him. Like, repeatedly.

[stuball111]

1. WoW!

That was awesome! I watched the whole thing. I'm from Canada originally, and it's good to see that those gals were well armed with the facts, and Ted Marmor knew more about the Canadian system than that jerk Rick Baker. That Baker asswipe is one of the ghouls that is licking his chops trying to get a private "system" up there to do exactly what insurance companies here do. And that is rake profit off sick people. He's also tied in with that fucking Fraser Institute, and their name is all over his website.

The Fraser Institute in Canada is nothing but a right wing, big business propaganda machine put together by capitalist pigs up there, with a fancy name, and call themselves a "think tank" All they are is a bunch of jack-offs in suits who scheme up ways to screw people and buck the system. They can not be relied upon for facts and data, as they gear it to suit their propaganda, something like faux news does.

I have the link here if anybody is interested, to Rick Bakers "Timely Medical Alternatives". What they offer is for you to "jump the queue in order to get faster treatment, OK if you are rich, BUT, in order to do that, you go outside the Universal system, and when you do, there are no guarantees that if something goes wrong, that back home in Canada, they will fix it, and you have no legal coverage either! What would happen if you had complications is that Baker would "sell" you more coverage, or you'd have to be out of pocket for fixing any fuck ups! What a scam! He's basically setting up back alley abortion style medical treatment for every operation, you pay, but no guarantee! Thanks for posting this, a must see!





http://www.timelymedical.ca/

[Lucy Goosey]

2. I didn't even realize that Baker had ties to the Fraser Institute

Though it doesn't surprise me.

For those who haven't seen the video, Baker, who supports privatizing the healthcare system, runs a business that helps Canadians who want to travel to the US for medical care. He says that in the 6 years he's been in business, he's helped around 500 people a year, and that 6 of those have been cases where (he claims) the patient would have died while waiting for care in Canada. And while it is wonderful that he was able to help those 6, I actually think that the fact that he's only averaged one life-or-death case a year actually speaks well of the system as a whole. I'd love to really get a chance to take a look at who his customers are - my sense is that a good number of them are probably rich people (his services don't come cheap) who think it's unfair that they can't buy their way to the front of the queue for non-urgent procedures.

Anyhow, the whole thing is well worth watching.

[stuball111]

3. Yes. I assumed that right off the bat about the Fraser Institute

He was talking just like them, and is based in Vancouver. The FI has been a proponent of private health care for years... smarmy bunch of lying bastards. Bakers site has Fraser Institute on almost every paragraph, as if they were some kind of important organization by using the name "Fraser" and Institute. They perpetually bring out statistics and other lies which they cook up to suit them and blab it like they are experts in something.

I had a go-around with Michael Walker on a radio talk show I called into in Vancouver once, I forget the topic, but I asked him who funded the Fraser institute, and who was in it and all that, he dodged the question, so I layed it out that they were not for a social agenda, or anything but big business capitalism, and he got all smarmy and laughed. They are dangerous, and a pipping noise that won't go away.
As for Baker, he is slime, and withered under fire from Marmor, and the Doctors, but guys like that don't waver when the smell of the almighty dollar is in the air.

[stuball111]

4. Thank you for posting this BTW

Everybody here should see this, and attention should be given to MSNBC. Maybe I'll send big Ed the link. It's also the best put down of the Shona Holmes thing I have seen yet. It amazed me that those Doctors, and Marmor, an American, would even ever have to be in a position to defend Universal Health Care.

[stuball111]

5. See my thank you post.. put it on the wrong thread