Back to Health Care, Again

Recently I dropped a comment over at Cold Fury that I'd like to get to a Why Canada Sucks post on multiculturalism. Guess that one is going to have to wait, since the host of my local all news station, and his guest, were blatting on about health care, and some new study about how wonderfully wonderful, awesome, look a unicorn, Canajun health care is.

The guest is a doctor, and is proud to tell us that most Canadians are happy with their doctor. And that, five years after getting a doctor, most Canadians are still with that doctor. And they're happy with Cuban, err, Canajun health care. And when a caller mentioned the CNN add wherein a Canadian woman complains about Canuckistadian health care, said Dr. guest (or maybe it was the host) says that, well, they found the one dissatisfied patient.

Hoo, boy, as always, where to begin?

Okay, lets start with Dr. Bimbo, an impressive specimen of the Canadian affirmative action medical education system. Ahh, isn't it grand that 1/2 of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of the class? And that med school admissions are highly dependant on your skin colour and genitalia, ensuring that our doctors come not from the best candidates, but the best politically correct candidates? Hey, I'm a fair kinda guy, I like to give the benefit of the doubt. I'll blame her stupidity on her, not on having intelligence removed by the system.

Canadians, once they get a doctor, don't change doctors. Hmm, after waiting, potentially years, to get a physician, people are unwilling to leave and look for another? I can only imagine that is because of deep satisfaction with the doctor, not because they fear waiting years more for another doctor. Hey Dr. Dimwit, the patient rosters aren't static because the system is good, it's because the system sucks.

Oh, and they found the ONE dissatisfied patient to complain, did they? And most Canadians are happy with the system. Let's break that in half. Maybe this guy can find some other dissatisfied patients. And was it not in Quebec that some dissatisfied patient successfully sued, in our extreme Liberal Supreme Court, Quebec Health over it's waiting times?

Come to think of it, you can count ME as a dissatisfied patient. Why? Because I've been a patient in a better system. The American one. You know what would be an interesting survey? A survey of Canadians who have had treatment in a private system, such as the American HMO system, of their satisfaction with the Canadian system.

And we're "satisfied," are we? The survey Dr. Bimbo cites is composed primarily of people who have known 1 health care delivery method, Cubas. Oops, there I go again, Canada's. And there are those amongst the born-profoundly-deaf who object to cochlear implants giving hearing to the profoundly deaf. They've never heard Mozart, so they dismiss the ability to hear. That dismissal comes from ignorance, just as the approval of Canada Shitty Health Care comes from the subjects of the Deranged Dominion.

To paraphrase Bob and Doug MacKenzie, the difference between Canadian health care and American health care is like the difference between side bacon and back bacon...one's better, eh? And no, Virginia, the Canadian health care system is not better.