July 8, 2009
CNN exposes the “benefits” of Canada’s public health care
You know the situation is bad when even CNN is reporting stories exposing the failure that is Canada’s public health care system:
For Shona Holmes, simple pleasures such as playing with her dog or walking in her plush garden are a gift.
After suffering from crushing headaches and vision problems, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor four years ago. She was told if it wasn’t removed, she could go blind or even die.
“They said to me that you had a brain tumor and it was pressing on your optic chasm and that it needed to come out immediately,” Holmes said.
Holmes is Canadian, but the “they” she refers to are doctors at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, where she turned after specialists in her own government-run health care system would not see her fast enough.
“My family doctor at that time tried to get me in to see an endocrinologist and a neurologist,” Holmes recalled. “It was going to be four months for one specialist and six months for the other.” Watch Holmes talk about her experience in getting treatment »
Even with the warning from U.S. doctors in hand, Holmes said she still couldn’t get in to see Canadian specialists. Because the government system is the only health care option for Canadians, she says she had no choice but to have the surgery in the U.S.
This story is but a small glimpse into what will happen if Obamacare passes. People always want to hold up Canada’s “free” health care as a model for the US to follow. What they don’t realize is that Canada’s health care system isn’t free. In fact, it costs lives. I would rather spend dollars.
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Well then, how about you pay my $1231.00 month premium for my policy?
The Canadians are not the only ones who have a single payer system. Research the British and French, and the French by the way seem to have a pretty darn good quality of life.
Doctors, Pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, for profit hospitals and of course the good old insurance companies have a vested stake in preventing single payer. Why? Because they can’t continue to make a ton of money off sick people. (Capitalism you know) But of course we still give healthcare to sick people. In the ER. The most expensive place you can get it. But who pays? Me. And just how do I know these things, besides paying the bill for it? I have been a nurse in this system for 35 years. Denial of care? Have you ever read the exclusion list of a private insurance policy?? Let’s get real.
Comment by Bobbi Smith — July 8, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
A small suggestion: Post the rest of the article where it talks about another person in a similar situation who goes from diagnose to treatment in a month. Post the rest of the article that admits the Canadian system has issues while arguing that it does offer universal coverage. There are more people in the US w/o insurance than there are people in Canada. I know it’s hard for you to avoid cutting a decently balanced article into a conservative talking point, but seriously, do some research. While there are negative aspects to the Canadian system, it does provide many benefits, aside from universal coverage, such as a longer lifespan than the US, a higher average quality of care, and a lower average costs. I could sit here and post link after link to examples of COVERED patients being turned away by hospitals and providers. However, if I included all of them, I might break the internet.
Comment by Blake Canada — July 8, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
I wonder if there will be any analysis as to how much of the existing Canadian health care satisfaction is predicated upon the American fallback.
IOW, what kind of satisfaction freefall should we expect, once there’s no need to register a “Mine is better” argument?
Comment by smitty — July 8, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
I had a child and prior to her birth I was hospitalised for approx. 3 weeks and not once did I have to worry about finances… not once.
My daughter was born and was not released from the hospital for approx. 3 weeks… and again not once did I have to worry about finances.
When she did come home, I was able to share my 1 year of maternity leave with my husband… I spent 7 months with her and my husband spent 5 months with her and NOT ONCE did we have to worry about finances….
You are most likely thinking “you are probably rich and could afford it”… well no, we are far from rich, we are barely middle-class… what we are though is CANADIAN.
And remember the thing that makes my story even sweeter is the fact that NOT ONCE did we have to pay money to an insurance company for the privilege of fighting with them to get a penny’s worth of coverage.
Again, it is not a fairytale that I am telling you… I am telling you how it is in Canada.
Oh Canada I stand on guard for thee!
Comment by marie — July 8, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
CNN’s was a very poor, one-sided treatment of the issue. You should actually do some research yourself rather than read some poorly researched nonsense from CNN and draw conclusions based on it. Here’s the URL for an article on Wikipedia that directly compares US and Canadian health care and doesn’t rely on anecdotal stories to paint a picture, but actually relies on research regarding things like cost and wait time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared
The sources for the information are also provided.
By the way, why is it that, when these comparisons are made, they always tell us about Canada, which is actually the worst of the single payer systems, and they don’t talk about the French or other systems that are better than any of them? Do you think we can only do as well as the worst system? Is the US so terrible, in your opinion, that we can’t somehow excel at anything, but must always fail? That’s a great view you have of Americans, pal.
Also, why don’t these articles ever mention that we have the most expensive health care per capita in the world while ranking only 37th (Canada ranks 30th) in health care according to the World Health Organization. Why didn’t that article mention that Canadians pay $3000 less per capita for health care than we pay in the US?
Just read what it says at that link and you’ll find out what a rotten article CNN published. You might even realize how desperately we need to move to single payer (which is something the White House and Congress are NOT proposing).
Comment by DBK — July 9, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
The American right wing is having a field day with commercials airing from Shona Holmes, a resident of Waterdown Ontario who describes herself as a ‘brain tumour survivor.” She is being used by those U.S. vested interests who oppose any hint of public health care (even though it is the only industrialized country that leaves its citizens to the capricious mercy of the private insurers, and seems unbothered by the fact that 50 million Americans have no coverage).
There is only one problem with her story: it isn’t quite true. To learn the truth about her condition, follow this Mayo Clinic link: http://www.mayoclinic.org/patientstories/story-339.html
The reason I feel so exercised about this situation is the fact that I had a brother-in-law who died of brain cancer, and the fact is, from the moment he was diagnosed (days after he had his initial seizure) to the time he died, he received excellent and timely care from the medical system in Ontario. Unfortunately, the nature of his brain cancer, multiform glioma, the same suffered by Ted Kennedy, invariably has a fatal outcome.
I suspect the truth of Ms Homes’ delay in treatment was, because it was never life-threatening, doctors were waiting for her condition to become more serious before operating.
In my view, despite her suffering and the fact that she chose to go to the United States, she should be ashamed of herself for undermining Obama’s efforts to bring some humanity to a system that is badly in need of it, and calling into disrepute a Canadian system that we would all be much worse off without.
Comment by Lorne — July 18, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
I’m sure I could relate to you thousands of stories of other Canadians who have had to use the health care system, and received excellent treatment.
When my wife and I sought help with infertility we went to our family doctor. She referred us to specialists who helped us. I had many tests and surgery, and they cost us nothing.
When my father had a tumor on his pituatary gland he received excellent health care, which included surgery to remove the tumor, and radiation treatment. It was free.
When a friend’s boyfriend recently had a heart attack he was taken to the hospital where he stayed for a week, had many tests, and surgery. It costs him nothing.
Stop worrying about Shona Holmes and the Canadian health care system, and worry about fixing your own problems. If she needed the surgery immediately, she would have gotten it.
Comment by Cameron — July 20, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
She complains at the fast food window of Canada that her burger is taking too long…so she goes to the US but then complains that the burger is too expensive.
There’s no pleasing people like this. These people always looking for reasons to be offended so they can complain and get attention.
Comment by Graham — July 21, 2009 @ 11:02 am
My 94-year-old Canadian mother-in-law had a stroke a few months ago that left her temporarily paralyzed on one side. She was hospitalized immediately, received extensive diagnostic testing to assess the damage, and had physiotherapy that restored her mobility so that some six weeks later, she was able to return to independent living in her small apartment. Even her medical alert system in the apartment is subsidized by the provincial health care system.
I am American, and I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to hear lies being told about the most humane health care system I have ever witnessed firsthand.
Waiting lists? Sometimes. But for 47,000,000 Americans there is no hope of ever getting on a waiting list.
Please stop spreading such lies on behalf of the people who have hijacked our health care system in the name of profit.
Comment by Linda — July 22, 2009 @ 1:40 am
I am not a viewer of CNN, but last week I tuned in to watch Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and the commercial featuring Ms. Holmes was played frequently throughout the hearings. I was incensed and absolutely disgusted with the blatant misinformation contained in this commercial about the Canadian health care system.
While we are generally healthy, my family and friends have received excellent and timely treatment over many years for cancer, stroke, heart problems, traumatic accidents and chronic conditions through the Canadian health care system. I cannot begin to think how much such treatment would have cost us in the United States – I know that we certainly could not have afforded some of those critical treatments without mortgaging our homes and depleting our savings if we were American.
My understanding is that Ms. Holmes had a condition called Rathke’s cleft cyst. I’m not a doctor, but I did some checking on this condition, including speaking to three Canadian physicians. All of them agreed that the condition was not life-threatening if treated over the course of several months. So while Ms. Holmes may have thought her particular condition was so serious as to warrant immediate treatment, I would imagine that her doctors were faced with patients whose conditions actually were immediately serious and were providing them with care first based upon their medical judgement – which, to me, seems like the sensible and humane way of distributing health care.
While our healthcare system is not perfect (what system is?), it provides coverage for all in our country – rich or poor, young or old, employed or jobless. The American system prioritizes the delivery of health care on the basis of whether a patient can afford to pay — if you can pay, you’re subjected to costly and unnecessary tests and treatment, and if you can’t pay you receive minimal or no treatment. In contrast, the Canadian system provides health care in priority sequence to those who need it most, with patients receiving treatment at the appropriate time.
If this woman chooses to mortgage her home and financially ruin herself and her family to receive $100,000 dollars worth of non-life threatening treatment a few months earlier than she would have in the Canadian health care system (where she would have had similar treatment and a similar outcome without assuming any cost), that is her prerogative. What’s unacceptable is that she presents her own distorted and unrepresentative opinion in the American media about a health care system an overwhelming majority of Canadians are thankful to have (and most Americans would, too, if they had accurate information at their disposal). Shame on you, Ms. Holmes.
Comment by Lisa in Canada — July 22, 2009 @ 9:03 am
why haven,t we been told this women has a rathke cleft cyst which leads me to believe she could have been the one to take her time before having it removed because of possible dangers of operation out weighing the diagnosis. could she be on payroll of GOP and CNP
Comment by wah — July 27, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
[...] is continually used as an example, among other nations like UK and France, but even CNN featured stories that exposed the failure of the Canadian health care system, for which the [...]
Pingback by Truth About ObamaCare, Truth About Socialized Medicine Everywhere « Lighthouse Patriot Journal — August 10, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
Two words for you… (pre-existing condition). The woman in this article could not get health insurance in the USA period! The insurance companies would simply deny her coverage, end of story. At least in Canada she would be treated eventually. By the way, the USA spends the most on heath care per person of any other country and has one of the lowest health care satisfaction rates. Boy, that sounds like a system that is working well.
Comment by Andy — August 12, 2009 @ 2:03 pm