Danny Williams Opts Out of Canadian Health Care System
Labrador and Newfoundland Premier to Have Heart Operation in the United States
It seems that Danny Williams, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, is coming to the United States for life-saving heart surgery. The spectacle of a prominent Canadian politician, a stout defender of the government-run health care system in Canada, opting out of that same system is rather too glaring not to notice.
Danny Williams is not the first Canadian to notice that reliance on the Canadian health care system is hazardous to one's health. Canada is said by people of a cynical bent to have a two-tier system, the Canadian Medicare system and the United States. Canadians of means, faced with life-threatening conditions that their health care system cannot address in a timely fashion, opt to travel to the United States and pay out-of-pocket for such things as heart operations and cancer treatments.
The bureaucrats who run the Canadian health care system have noticed that American hospitals can conduct life savings procedures in a timely fashion. The Detroit Free Press ran a story several months ago how some Detroit hospitals are taking Canadian patients and are being reimbursed by the Canadian Medicare system.
Americans are usually accustomed to having their jobs outsourced to other countries. Only in this case Canada is outsourcing its health care system to the United States, taking advantage of the relative free market aspects of American health care to try to deal with the long wait times that entrap Canadian patients with life-threatening conditions.
Premier Danny Williams has certainly noticed this dichotomy between Canada's health care system and that of the United States. That is why that when his life was threatened by his heart condition, he chose to go to the United States to get it handled. His only alternatives were to wait his turn in Canada and possibly dying before he got an operation or using his political influence to jump the queue and thus risk political suicide.
One wonders how long this kind of surreal doublethink on the part of Canadians, not just prominent politicians, who defend their health care system as "more fair" but then opt out of it as needed and if the means are available. Perhaps one day it may occur to Canadians that they can have the immediate convenience of American health care in their own country, should they have the courage to privatize their socialist system.
Sources: Danny Williams going to U.S. for heart surgery, CBC News, February 2nd, 2010
Canadians visit U.S. to get health care, Patricia Anstett, Detroit Free Press, August 20th, 2009
Published by Mark Whittington
Mark R. Whittington is a writer residing in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo, Dark Sanction, and Nocturne. He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington... View profile
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