Stuff About the Things

The House of Representatives, failing to heed the warning of Canada's disastrous "universal" health-care plan (for example, OHIP, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, only covers seventy percent of what one might pay for hospital care) passed a bill that would purportedly give Americans a public health-care plan. It must, however, go through the Senate.

And there's the rub.

The abortion language in the bill is too strong for some.

From the article (emphasis mine):

President Barack Obama is facing a potential mutiny among liberal Democrats
in Congress over a US$1.1-trillion health care bill that
includes new restrictions on abortion in the United States.

The House bill would prohibit coverage of abortion services under a new
government-run public insurance plan except in case of incest, rape or
life-threatening situations. That language reflects existing U.S. health
care law.

But the legislation also bars individuals from purchasing
private insurance that covers abortion if they receive a government subsidy to make health coverage affordable.

About 85% of private insurance plans in the U.S. currently cover
abortion.

The standing bill really isn't prohibitive of abortion at all and still sticks tax-payers with the bill. Nevertheless, some are quite displeased:

Instead, the anti-abortion amendment "represents an unprecedented and
unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of
reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled," Ms. DeGette
wrote in a letter signed by 40 other Democrats. "We will not vote for a
[final bill] that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law."

It would be quite laughable if it wasn't so serious. The basic right to life for all humans and the right to autonomy are so far removed from the liberal mind because they are not getting their way. The people who would defeat Obama's incredibly expensive socialist plan are the same people who would support it in the first place. It's like watching sharks eat the carcass of another shark.

Back to Obama's expensive plan...

As was stated before, the plan costs $1.1 trillion USD. There are 307,904,351 people in the United States as of this posting with an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, 54.4 disabled persons, about 31.5 million retired workers and the number of elementary school age children was 36 million as of 2008. The number of people with health insurance increased slightly in 2008 to 255.1 million in 2008 and those who had governmental health insurance numbered at 87.4 million. The unemployment rate stands at 10.2 % as of this posting.

Canada's population now stands at 33,739,900 (Alberta experienced the fastest demographic growth) with Ontario being the most populous.

Despite common beliefs, Canada's health-care is neither free nor is it universal. We are taxed for it. The government accounts for seventy percent of health-care coverage while private insurance for dental care and drugs covers the remaining thirty percent. As one can see, the latter does not count as universal. Many provinces charge premiums or user fees (though user fees are supposed to be prohibited under the Canada Health Act). As of 2008, the provincial spending rate per person in Ontario was $3,270.

An overview of the Canada Health Act.

Despite increased awareness of wait times, waiting for essential services has decreased only slightly. One in five Canadians have no regular doctor. Let's not forget the dire situation of emergency rooms around the country and the care one is expected to receive. One court ruling found that an ER doctor was not expected to have any more or less knowledge than the average family physician in an emergency setting and it was for this reason the doctor in question was not responsible for a death. It sounds like civil servants looking after civil servants. Even Europe, Obama's grand template, leads over Canada's health-care system.

I personally know how abysmal emergency room treatment can be (apparently it's acceptable to make people waiting on gurneys for three days with pneumonia or broken ribs, for nurses to shout at patients and their families, for elderly cancer patients to wait and never be referred to specialists) and how universal standards are not applied across the country making it difficult for a trained Canadian (or Commonwealth) medical practitioner to practice in another part of the country. How dispensing over-the-counter cold medicines or delivering babies differs in time zones I am unsure but this raises a particular predicament: will each state prohibit a medical practitioner from practicing in another part of the country?

We are buckling under the system right now. How can the US, with its massive debt, high unemployment, unemployable populaces and high cost of living, adopt and make work a system that it's own neighbour has trouble maintaining?

Speaking of doctors:

A doctor who said cancer rates were higher in a small aboriginal community downstream of Alberta's oil sands made misleading and inaccurate statements and obstructed Health Canada and the Alberta Cancer Board in their efforts to investigate his claims, the College of Physicians and Surgeons has concluded.

You mean to tell me that a Canadian doctor lied about cancer rates in order to make a point (I'm sure now to be invalid) about the Alberta tar sands? Isn't there a Hippocratic Oath or just plain decency to prevent that kind of political treachery?

Life, as we suspected, was horrible behind the Berlin Wall. Good thing it came down.

And Obama makes some blithering statement about an obviously motivated individual who deliberately killed thirteen people.

And now, the Matrix as it might have been.