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.

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.

There’s no pleasing people like this. These people always looking for reasons to be offended so they can complain and get attention.

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.

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).

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!