As our shot at universal coverage slips slowly away into the pockets of big pharma and the health insurance industry, it might be a good time to redirect naysayer’s attentions to a country that was much maligned by tea-baggers as an example of a public healthcare system gone terribly wrong.
I was watching ski-jumping on CBC this afternoon when suddenly a public service spot came on requesting that everyone in Canada be vaccinated against H1N1. “We have plenty for everyone,” the smiling spokeswoman said. No matter what your opinion is on vaccination, it’s pretty obvious that the Canadian healthcare system has it all-over the U.S. when it comes to providing emergency care for its population in this particular health-care crisis.
Why are we such patsies down here?
The association between “freedom” and one’s “right” to private property; The bizarre-o land understanding that one person (or corporation)’s right to profit and wealth trumps the rights of everyone else, or even society at-large’s rights to provide or care for ourselves. Tied-in yet simultaneously helping to cause all this is the corporate monopoly of the press, thus limiting/skewing the conversation about, well, everything.
A nation of rugged individualism gets exactly that, and none of the strong social (or political) ties that have forced all the things that the rest of the industrialized world has (health care, education, environmentalism, consumer protections, vacation time, 35 hour works weeks, etc etc) that the U.S. doesn’t.
In short, we’re such patsies cause we’re so “tough”.
Many of us think politics is a spectator sport. We focus on the players and the score. We don’t seem to get that we are in this game
I’ve seen that PSA on the two CBC station which are the only tv I receive since the switch to digital.
So why isn’t Bernie organizing buses for Vermonters to cross the border to get vaccinated? He did it for prescription drugs.
I’m in about three risk groups — and still haven’t managed to find a vaccination for H1N1.
NanuqFC
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Vaccine buses!” I wonder whether the Canadians could be persuaded to dispense to Yankees(?) They’re providing the vaccinations for free to every single Canadian, but would they feel they had enough to share?