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Health care's absurd mythology
Friday, July 27, 2007
Last week's No Apologies radio show on universal health care created quite a stir.
One fellow likened my article to an act of treason because I had violated one of the chief tenets of Canadian patriotism. I had failed to praise our health care system.
Another gentleman, somewhat less impassioned, although equally upset, wrote:
"How can you be a self-respecting Canadian and not praise our system?"
So, I didn't praise our health care. So what! The system is functionally flawed and morally bankrupt.
However, I will concede this much. I should have been more nuanced.
So here it is ...
My attempt at nuance.
Of course, Canada's system isn't straight from the pit of hell.
And of course, America's system isn't a slice of heaven, either.
Happy now?
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| Listen Online! |
| On this week's No Apologies radio show, Tristan Emmanuel responds to some of the impassioned defenders of Canadian socialized medicine. Even some ECP Centre supporters were taken aback at last week's show, so this week there's a further clarification. Also, on the news portion with Al Stevens, some stuff you'd never hear on Canadian radio. Hear a US talk show host speak the truth about Islam in a clip that's so true (and so politically incorrect) that he'd be barred from the airwaves in Canada. |
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This week's show:
Health care's absurd mythology
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In last week's column, I suggested that not only is Canada's health care system suffering from a brain drain and bloated bureaucracy, to drive home the point I said that our waiting list is soooo long "it has become a driveway to the morgue."
An exaggeration? Well, the "soooo" part is.
I wasn't saying health care in Canada is bad - when you actually get it - I was talking about the absurdity of praising its "universal accessibility" because so few people do get it in a timely manner.
But when you have to spell it out like I am now, the line loses its impact.
Of course, not every Canadian is on a list waiting to meet Dr. Death - he is, after all, an American!
Canadians, that are hyper-sensitive because I wasn't being "fair" about our grand accomplishment need to take a good long look at themselves before they start pointing a finger.
Consider the absurd mythology about America's health care that many have come to embrace as fact.
How often has it been said that 40 million Americans without insurance are being turned away by American health care facilities?
And what about the mantra that everywhere poor people are literally dropping like flies on the sidewalk outside hospitals - left there to die because they can't pay their bill? Just where is the video footage on YouTube? If such footage existed, it'd be all over the network news. I mean, talk about sensational!
Or what about the snooty insistence that American physicians are motivated by only one thing - "profit" - and that no altruistic physicians exist anywhere in the country?
Is that "fair and balanced"?
Is it even fact?
What we don't hear about American health care in Canada is what you see at almost any public hospital in Southern California. Pregnant women, due to give birth at any minute, sitting on the curb in front of the hospital. Most of them are from Mexico or other foreign countries. They're illegal immigrants. And when they go into labor, the American system gives the doctors and nurses in those hospitals no choice. These women have to be admitted to the maternity ward even though they can't pay. (Incidentally, the child that's born is then automatically an American citizen by birth, and guess what? Mom (and dad) can now apply for naturalization if they choose to, because they've got a blood relative who's an American citizen.)
I guess all of that is just a lot of exaggeration too, right? I mean, health care for the poor, non-citizens and illegals? All picked up by the American taxpayer? Who am I kidding?
But forget all of that.
The real issue isn't the failures of either system. It has to do with who is best equipped to ensure that health care is available and compassionate: the state or the free market?
Maybe health care shouldn't be a "bottom line" profit-driven enterprise - maybe. However, somehow Canadians, and most liberal Americans, have got it drilled into their brains that the only way to avoid the "greed" factor in the health care enterprise is to parlay it through the hands of a benevolent state.
Ah, yes, a state bureaucracy that knows nothing of greed and envy. If America has bureaucracies like that, they should send some our way!
Just one more thing.
If the government controls health care, as the Democrats (and even some Republicans) would like, who's to say that "compassion" as a philosophy will dictate the process by which the poor, the elderly and the disabled receive their care? Especially considering that both countries are embracing a culture of death - with increasing lobbying on both sides of the border for euthanasia - and increasing hostility on both sides of the border toward Christian notions of servitude, mercy and life? Honestly, could someone like Florence Nightingale work in a public health system run by people who think like that?
Bottom line: An anti-Christian state exercising exclusive control over health care as our society ages and fewer young people are around to pay the piper will mean only one thing for both countries - the morgues will be even fuller.
| Yours for our culture, |
Tristan Emmanuel |
| ECP Centre President |
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Stop the Presses!
by Joseph Farah
"Stop the presses!" You've heard newspaper editors shout that phrase in old movies. Joseph Farah was never a newspaper editor in the movies - he was one in real life. But he no longer works with ink, presses and newsprint.
A decade ago, Farah founded WorldNetDaily.com (WND.com) and became a pioneer on the New Media frontier. Today WND.com is the largest independent news service on the Internet. Stop the Presses! is not just Farah's story, but that of a new wave of media superstars who have forever changed the way Americans get their news and express their views.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge...these are just some of the New Media names that old-school media like ABC News has acknowledged "rule our world." This revolution has shaken the foundations of the mainstream media, eroding its ability to control the flow of information...and with it, the power to control the lives of millions around the world.
The New Media revolution's beginnings have never been told - until now.
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