From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism
Subject: Re: Health care will-o-wisps
Date: 3 Sep 92 01:42:59 GMT
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Curious Goods (formerly Louis Vendredi Antiques)

demon@desire.wright.edu (Stupendous Man) writes:
>
>	On PBS last night, even with a pro-Canadian bent, the show on 
>health care underscored the radical differences between the US and 
>Canada.
>
>	Lack of procedures, waiting lines, lack of funds are driving 
>people south to get care at US facilities.
>
>	It's great to spend less, but it's not worth dying over.

Even though this show is a couple of years old at least, CNN's recent
focus series in early June didn't say much more that needed to be said
outside of the facts.  The only "radical difference" is that basic
medical coverage is universal (yes, we have private insurance, too,
for non-medical stuff).  Even Canadian conservatives like the Fraser
Institute have come out with updated (and favourable) figures for our
system because Americans have been running amok with their old data.

Despite the yearning need for some commentators to accuse our system
of being run by the government, it is no more so outside of routing
funds for health insurance.  Oh, of course you can't find a doctor who
will change his/her mind and give you an operation that you insist
upon just because you've got the cash ... (money can still talk in
other ways, but that's human society, isn't it?)

As I've pointed out in another posting, medical travel is built-in
because of the way the population is distributed on this continent.
Don't tell me that people from Montana don't have to travel because
next-to-nobody lives there ... since Canada only has four real cities
[Vancouver (1.5 Million), Edmonton and Calgary (~750,000 each), and
Winnipeg (600,000)] west of the great lakes, and California is closer
to most of Western Canada than Southern Ontario or Quebec, and thus
any medical travel by the handful of legitimate customers (covered by
their provincial health plan) follows natural patterns just like the
north-south flow of regional trade recognized in our current Canada-
US Free Trade Agreement.

If anything, real socialized medicine would force doctors in obscure
specialties to reside where they wouldn't be seeing much work, rather
than locate in large population centres that would see steady billings.

In CNN's series looking at the real health care system in Canada this
past June, a Toronto woman who had to go down to Washington, D.C. for
a procedure was interviewed by Catherine Crier and no matter how hard
Crier pushed her, would not criticize OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance
Plan) for her plight -- nobody in her province nor Quebec (forget
about the smaller-population provinces next door like Manitoba) was
practicing in that medical area, and that even Americans had to travel
to D.C. for it.  She also reminded Crier that the USA is ten times
bigger than Canada and would likely have more stuff ...

If we're such a socialist gulag, check out "Forever Knight" (Toronto,
with occasional location shots in NYC in case viewers catch on; CBS)
or "The Roundtable" or "The Heights" (Vancouver; Fox) ... hey, coulda
fooled me! (-;

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				Elections 1992-93:
> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		* Jean Chretien (Canada)
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			* Perot^H^H^H^H^H Elvis! (USA)
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