Scott Weiser wrote:
Interesting story today in the Boulder Daily Camera about the
Canadian
health care crisis. Page 4B.

It's by Beth Duff-Brown of the Associated Press.

"A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient
in need
of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three
months. It
added: 'If the person named on this computer-generated letter is
deceased,
please accept our sincere apologies.'"

The article says the patient wasn't dead, but this letter provides
cold
comfort to those who obviously do die before they get medical care in
Canada, evidently in sufficient numbers to persuade health care
workers to
apologize in advance.

"The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in
taxes
each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from
province
to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40
percent of
every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers
Federation."

Wow! Forty-eight percent of income for health care that you can't get
when
you need it. What a bargain!

"George Zeliotis told the court he suffered pain and became addicted
to
painkillers during a yearlong wait for hip replacement surgery, and
hsould
have been allowed to pay for faster service. His physician, Dr.
Jacques
Chaoulli, said his patient's constitutional rights were violated
because
Quebec couldn't provide the care he needed, but didn't offer him the
option
of getting it privately."

And then there's this:

"But tell that to the hospital administrators constantly having to
cut staff
for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she
would
have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee
ligament."

So much for the "I can get private health care whenever I want in
Canada"
argument...

"[A]ccording to experts on both sides of the debate, Canada and North
Korea
are the only countries with laws banning the purchase of insurance
for
hospitalization or surgery."

...and you can't buy supplemental insurance to protect yourself even
if you
want to. Talk about your socialistic, egalitarian "share the pain"
bedfellows...Canada and North Korea don't care a fig if you, the
individual,
suffers, they only care that everyone suffers together in comradely
communistic solidarity, while paying 48% of income for the privilege.
Bleah.

It also seems that the average wait time between referral and
treatment has
risen from 9.3 days to 17.9 days since 1993.

What's more, the percentage of Canadians who had same-day access to a
doctor
when sick or needing medical attention is the lowest (27%) of all
when
compared to New Zealand (60%), Australia (54%), Britain (41%), and
the
USA (33%).

And, Canada has the lowest ratio of practicing physicians per 1000
persons
(2.1) of all when compared to Italy (4.4), Belgium (3.9), France
(3.3),
Australia (2.5), and the USA (2.4).

(Sources cited in the article: Fraser Institute; Organization for
Economic
Cooperation and Development; The Commonwealth Fund: Bank of Canada.)

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

=A9 2005 Scott Weiser

Scott, I can hear the reply already, consider the source; Fraser
Institue, right wing US backed mouth piece of the Anti-Canandian
socialized medical system SIG. We'll see if anyone will attempt to
refute the actual stats or anecdotal accounts.

But then when you bought the farm, it is hard to admit that the
chickens are not laying any eggs, the cow not giving the milk, and the
corn crop not yielding the corn. TnT