[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end

  • From: Brian <cabrian@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 14:26:16 -0500

On 5/24/05, Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >Brian:
> >Decent to poor is generally the consensus I read and hear and I think
> >I'd call the health care system itself a boondoggle.  The debacle of
> >treating health care as a right.
> >
> >
> Well, call me crazy, but I'm happy with it.  (Not that it couldn't use
> improvements...or even an overhaul).  Most Americans get their
> impressions of the Canadian system from the mouths of the AMA and the
> health care insurance industry.   My mother has had three brain
> surgeries to remove tumours in the last twenty-five years.  The first
> was in the States (she lived in Chicago then) and, even with Blue Cross,
> she paid for ten years on that debt.  The other two she had here in
> Canada (after immigrating in the 1980s) and never paid a penny.  Pretty
> good value for her $700 health premium.    I know that's just anecdotal
> evidence and can be countered with stories about waiting lines and
> shortages etc.,  but it is enough evidence for me that the system works
> 'decently'.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother.  When I talk to people from
Canada and read about the system I hear of the same inefficient,
bloated, wasteful signatures that are part and parcel of a
bureaucracy.  Has anyone seen the film THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS where
the filmmaker skewers the Canadian health system?

> >  (Canadian health cards, by the way, fetch a pretty penny on your side =
of the border.)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Really?  I can't imagine why.  Even in the frozen tundra I guess the
> >grass looks greener on the other side.
> >
> >
> >
> Meaning?   You can't imagine that there are Americans playing Canadians
> to get free medical care?

Yes, exactly.  You can do that in the U.S. without the waits and red
tape you have in Canada.  The daughter of a friend of mine is without
insurance and just had her second child and she hasn't paid anything
for either births (from the doctor visits all the way up to the
hospital bills.  Her daughter just born is badly deformed and they
only expect her to live days, not weeks, all paid for by the American
public).  Again, anecdotal, but I wouldn't personally choose the
Canadian system over our seriously broken own.

~Brian~
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