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And she’s a stickin’ to her story or should I say her lie about a “brain tumour” that really was a benign cyst of the petuitary gland. She’s back on the tea-party circuit again and she’s featured on the latest Koch brothers’ anti-Obama ads. Just one thing, Shona, how much are the Koch brothers paying you to be their puppet star on their ads?
Oh, and here’s a story about someone with experience with both Canadian and American health care systems while dealing with a brain stem tumour.
The treatment for chordoma was 8-10 weeks of proton radiation, give or take a few days. It cost somewhere between $100 and $200 thousand and most HMO’s didn’t want to cover it. My friend was no exception. So several times a week she’d get on the phone to plead with her insurer to pay for another week of treatment.
She didn’t complete the treatment. And she stopped answering my emails a year later. She was dead.
I met a very funny guy from the South with some kind of cancer of the scalp. He didn’t complete. He’s dead.
I was asked to talk with a young guy who didn’t have the money to get a proper diagnosis until too late. So as the chordoma destroyed the vertebrae in his neck he saw a chiropractor who told him he was out of alignment. For two years he was out of alignment. Then in terrible pain he saw a real doctor. He didn’t complete. He’s also dead – late diagnosis, limited treatment.
So, Shona, quite a few folks dead because of a health care system you so enjoy and you want to bring this kind of misery here to Canada? I say move to the states and don’t bother us anymore. Here’s more.
But in Canada there are no people at the end of a phone pleading for funding to continue life saving treatments. People die in the States because they can’t afford treatment and their private plans won’t pay for it.
I’m at the BC Cancer Clinic a lot. I see frustrated people. I’m often frustrated. But I don’t see people pleading for treatment they need but can’t afford. None. You can’t say that about the US.
So Shona, what say ya now, dear?
Shona ain’t alone, unfortunately. This is exactly the kind of system Jimbo Flaherty’s corporate thugs who attended his little party last summer, along with ol Stevie Spiteful, hisself wants for Canada. One piece of evidence of this was the very fact that ol’ Stevie and his Harpercon puppets never once denounced her acts or her lies. Not once. It’s also the kind of health care system that many, if not, most Canadian doctors want. At least, it appears that most past presidents of the Canadian Medical Association want that kind of health care. F
H/T Jymn
Here’s an interesting fact about American-style health care … I had three uncles who practiced medicine in California. The youngest one felt the effects of American-style healthcare and gave away his practice. He told me that there was no longer any trust between patients and doctors. And he went on to take a position as the Medical Director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hospital. Not too shabby!! But all three of them left Canada because there was a quota on Jews in medical facilities post-graduation. So we, Canadians, cannot claim to be the saints of healthcare. One Canadian can indeed … Tommy Douglas. And the NDP are carrying the torch that he lit. So if you are angry about the values and objectives of Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty, I suggest that you join the NDP and put your energy to work where it will do a great deal of good.
“My Friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world” Wise words from Jack Layton … take them to heart and make them your To Do List.
“Canadian Doctors for Medicare is an organization advocating the maintenance and improvement of Canada’s universal, single-payer health care system – Medicare. Just four years old, we are a growing organization with over 2,500 members across Canada.
We believe in reform and innovation within our public health care system, and we collaborate with other health professionals and friends to educate physicians and public about the benefits of a single-payer (government) system and the dangers of two-tier health care – one system for the wealthy and one for everyone else, to the detriment of our public system.”
For more information, visit their website: http://www.canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca/new-members.html
Healthy Thinking:
We’d all like to have perfect health. It’s a natural desire to want to feel our best, both physically and mentally. But eventually we must all suffer some form of illness as we go through life, and eventually we will all need some form of care.
As our population ages and healthcare costs soar, the question is; What would be the most cost effective way to deliver healthcare to the growing needs of our society?
Let’s go back to the perspective of mental health for a moment. How would a truly healthy and sane mind approach the problem, and what would be the answer from a healthy thinker, a healthy mind? Come on now; think about it, in your most sane and healthy frame of mind. All things considered, you’ll conclude that there can only be one intelligent answer: A truly universal healthcare system.
I know the private sector will disagree, but as we’ve learned from experience, to introduce bankers and insurance companies into the mix is to introduce parasites into our healthcare system, literally. They consume a large amount of our healthcare dollars with no return, funds that could be used for the advancement of health services, but instead go to shareholders and result in an increase in the cost of products and services in general. The shareholders expect ever-increasing profits, and costs will continue to rise in an effort to appease their greed, the results being: A complete deterioration of all health services and the creation of a “perpetual debt”.
The health and welfare of our nation must take precedence over the well being of financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and consortiums that are more interested in profit margins than the health and wellness of society. Their involvement results in an unjustifiable increase in the cost for all procedures, services, prescription drugs and anything else related to the medical field, costs that are deliberately inflated because they fall under the “magical” label of healthcare. To have a healthy system we must think healthy. Rid ourselves of the parasites that are corrupting our healthcare system and infecting our government with unhealthy mental attitudes towards the solutions to our healthcare needs.
Furthermore, we elect and maintain a democratic government to provide for the security and welfare of the nation. To privatize our healthcare is to put the nation in the hands of a corporation that has no accountability and offers no security. This is a breach of the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms. It’s unconstitutional. Any politician or bureaucrat who is an advocate for a privatized system comes to that position not through a process of healthy, rational, objective thought, but because they have been paid to, and are obviously corrupt. Why else would anyone betray his or her countrymen?
How I lost my fear of Universal Health Care: When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/permissiontolive/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health-care.html