I can't say it better than this, so I'll just provide links:
Why the lies you hear about Canadian health care are false
and
Why the best Americans can do is still undeniably worse.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Who am I?
- RioIriri
- I blog about my life, my health, my pets, and some of my opinions. I am married to a wonderful person, and I am devoted to caring for and learning about animals. My education is in biology, chemistry, and fisheries. My reading list for 2007.
I love Liza!
I love Liza Phoenix!
|
|
6 comments:
Loooove this:
It's fascinating to watch well-educated secularists who recoil at the Protestant obsession with personal virtue, prosperity as a cardinal sign of election by God, and total responsibility for one's own salvation turn into fire-eyed, moralizing True Believers when it comes to the subject of Taking Responsibility For One's Own Health.
They'll insist that health, like salvation, is entirely in our own hands. If you just have the character and self-discipline to stick to an abstemious regime of careful diet, clean living, and frequent sweat offerings to the Great Treadmill God, you'll never get sick.
Andee (Meowser)
Much of this also applies to the Australian health care system, except that it's fallen into a bit of disrepair over the past decade thanks to a conservative federal government that ran things down and cut funding to the states' health care budgets.
But we've voted them out and people are hopeful that the new Labor government will restore good health to the system itself. I'm just hoping it doesn't go the way of the UK's NHS which is way over-administrated and not known for its fat-friendliness.
People in America actually BELIEVE those untruths about the Canadian Health system!?!? Oh my goodness!
I immigrated to Canada as a small child and even though I'm only 21 now I still get sick often and I have no idea if I'd even be alive without the Canadian system. I live in the most populous province (Ontario) right outside Toronto and I can definitely verify 100% that this article is dead-on with it's description of the health care system and the Canadian peoples' perspective of it.
There is no communist thing going on in this country. It's just a bunch of (humble) people getting through harsh winters, super hot summers and trying to live as peacefully as possible--it's that simple people!! I think all Americans definitely deserve "free" health care--why not?
Excellent articles; thanks. The point in Part 1 about "medical Calvinism" was really spot-on. One thing, though, the British National Health Service is kind of doing the same thing by refusing treatment to fat patients. It's the same attitude as that in the US: if you just "live right," you won't get sick. (Which is of course b.s.)
The bottomline is that for some people in the U.S., the current system is better than the Canadian one. For others in the U.S., the Canadian system would be better.
By the same token, if the government raised taxes a little, and paid the amount out in extra unemployment benefits, it would benefit some but harm others.
Whether in health or in unemployment, the issue is about the morality of government-enforced wealth redistribution.
Here's is an article on the morality of the issue.
Softwarenerd, the current system is better for healthy people with steady work that keeps them in the upper-middle-class or higher income bracket. It pretty much sucks for everyone else, and that article has utterly failed to convince me otherwise.
The author basically keeps repeating the line that 'well, if we would just get the Evil Government out of the Free Market and let it do its work, everything would get better.' The free market doesn't apply to health care the way it applies to cars or houses; people don't have the option of not getting health care if the companies charge too much, so there's no incentive to keep the prices down. I'd much rather have the government in charge of my health insurance than a corporation; at least with the government I get some kind of say in how it's run.
(Sorry for grandstanding on your blog, Rio Iriri, this is just something near and dear to my heart).
Post a Comment