The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment’s cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec’s Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It’s a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene — by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don’t clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don’t bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That’s the official number. Unofficially, if you’re over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to “old age” or some such and then “lose” the relevant medical records. Quebec’s health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq’s.
One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it’s a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can’t wait to bring it south of the border. —Mark Steyn
—No time for Kerry’s Europhile delusions (Sun Times)
This essay, by a Canadian who supports Bush, is blogworthy not only because it presents an opinion that runs against the grain, but I lived in Canada for about six years, and my son was born there.
As an international student, I did not get free healthcare during most of my stay, but paid a small fee for an insurance policy that gave pretty much the same service that Canadians got, except there was a cap. At any rate, when my son was born in a Canadian hospital, I noted the coldness of the health care… fortunately, there were no complications during the birth, and the doctors themselves seemed fine, but the nurses and orderlies and others who were supposed to interact with the patients didn’t smile (okay, maybe they were overworked), we were instructed to bring our own diapers and infant care products (which, granted, we’d have had to buy anyway), and when my son was born, they wrapped him in a pink blanket.
I tried to control the emotional impact of this violation of the signification of color and gender, but as I was getting out my camera, I sheepishly asked for a yellow blanket, or even a white towel to wrap around the pink.
I got a blank stare in response.
It wasn’t even a look of horror, like Oliver Twist got after he asked for “more”… it was the look of a time-clock punching unionized government employee who has no incentive to offer “service”. The nurse and an orderly made a vague show of looking at each other, but neither even bothered to shake their heads or shrug. They just stared blankly.
When I published the photo on the Internet, I photoshopped it to make the pink blanket blue (sort of… not my best digital editing job).
Perhaps my experience was unusual, but reading this article brought it all back… Yes, healthcare in the United States is costly, and yes, there are definitely abuses that need to be curbed, but my experience living with socialized medicine reminds me that Americans — self-centered as we are — demand good customer service, and won’t stand long for the Canadian style of healthcare (should it ever be instituted here).
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Thanks, Julia, for reminding everyone of the sacrifices that Canadian workers -- and that people everywhere -- are capable of making in extreme circumstances.
There was a nearby children's hospital where Peter would have been taken if there had been any complications, and I'm sure the level of care he would have gotten there would have been top-notch.
The health care system in Canada isn?t perfect.
Hospital hygiene is a very important thing that has tragic consequences to ANY community when people are made ill/die because it has failed.
I?m a member of the Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) at Victoria University (in the University of Toronto). Part of the JHSC training involves attending training sessions and seminars. It is not entirely surprising that when videos are used in the sessions those put together from a management perspective portray the unionized workers as the source of whatever problem is being addressed and the reverse is portrayed in those videos produced from the workers perspective.
The failure of hygiene procedures in Quebec that lead to 600 known deaths from C. difficile bacteria is terrible, but so is blaming the unionized cleaning staff.
Many people have intimate contact with patients and not all are hospital staff: some visitors assist patients by feeding them, hold their hands, use the patient?s washroom (after it has been cleaned), etc. ANYONE entering a health care facility should take extra care in their practice of hygiene whether they are staff, management, or just visiting.
The care and compassion I saw from health care workers during the recent SARS outbreak in Toronto was above and beyond the call. A few health care workers died. Many are still recovering from the disease and have had to leave the medical profession (article on SARS recovery in today?s Toronto Star).
Dennis, I?m sorry you had what you feel is a scarring experience surrounding Peter?s birth ? I can say the altered image looks a fine shade of purple! ;)
In case those of you (who aren?t Dennis) are wondering?I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I had my free flu shot last week (total wait time 10 minutes). I work at the University of Toronto and am a member of the United Steelworkers of America Local 1998 (the union of the Administrative staff at U of T). I have friends who work in various capacities (medical and support staff) in numerous Toronto hospitals. I have had occasion to use Emergency Room facilities twice in the past year. I lived in Gibsonburg and Perrysburg, Ohio, USA from 1980-1985 (the Reagan years).
I've been very fortunate in terms of my own health and that of my family, so I haven't had any of the bad experiences to compare with Anonymous. Boo hoo for me, the complication-free, essentially cost-free birth of my son was spoiled when he was wrapped in pink. (I probably sounded a bit whiny.)
I'm adding this to my "rhetoric" category because George points out a good example of using a "fact" to make a point that is not necessarily supported by the fact.
I think we're missing a key piece of information. Knowing that "last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile" tells us nothing that helps us compare Canada's healthcare to America's. We need to ask this: How many American patients in a comparably-sized American city have died because of "inattention to hygiene"? If the number is less than 600, that's a (small) piece of evidence in support of the author's argument.
Well...I think this part of the article you quoted is pretty pointless. The logic seems to be 1. The author likes Bush 2. Kerry likes socialized health care 3. So socialized health care is bad...where's an example? 4. Canada's health care is poor (supposedly) - it must be because of their socialized health care system!
You lived in Canada, so perhaps you have more insight than I do. But by the "health care employees don't care because the system is socialized" argument, I could say that no college professors give a damn about they're doing either because they have Tenure.
My father tells me that when I was born, it was the middle of the night in the hospital. The nurses went off duty because it was the end of their shift, and no new nurses showed up for 20 minutes. My mothers water broke, and finally my father had to run around the hospital trying to find a nurse or doctor.
Yeah, good thing everything's so much better here.
Finally, I think that his final claim that Canada's health care system is a lot less healthy than Iraq's is absurd. I haven't used Iraq's health care system - I imagine neither has he.
There are plenty of pros and cons on both sides of the border, but let me give you a couple of examples of the wonderful healthcare system in the US. I slipped on black ice and smashed up my foot a couple of years ago. Broken bones, dislocated ankle... I spent almost 36 hours in the emergency room because there were no rooms available. Sugery couldn't be scheduled until there was a room for me to go to. More recently, last week, in fact, my little grandson spent almost a week with a broken arm because it wasn't considered high priority to get it into a cast. My son was told that if they had gone to the University hospital (one of the most prestigious in the country), it would have been seven to ten days. And let's not forget the flu vaccine shortage. We American can demand until we're blue in the face, but it's becoming more and more the rule that we won't get it.