The US is consumed with discussion of health-care alternatives, and in US politics it seems to be OK to knowingly tell bald-face lies, and in US media it seems not OK to call a lie by its true name. Here’s a small bit of first-hand reportage about the working of another approach to health-care.

My mother-in-law is in her late seventies, suffering from progressive dementia, has always been thin as a rail, and is strong-willed and sometimes difficult. She lives on a farm in a fairly remote part of Saskatchewan.

She collapsed at home this week and has been diagnosed with a perforated ulcer. She’s also dramatically more disoriented and doesn’t seem to see properly, so maybe there was a little stroke or some other neurological misfortune in parallel.

She was taken to the nearest hospital, which happens to be a Catholic-run institution, where she’s receiving compassionate and competent care. They’re making it easy for her husband and daughter to be near her as required.

She immigrated to Canada in the nineties and hasn’t become a citizen yet. Interestingly, Lauren tells me that quite a few of the doctors and other hospital staff are also immigrants.

The key points are these:

• She’s getting high-quality care.

• The costs are covered by our public-sector health insurance.

• The facts that she’s a recent immigrant, that her income is negligible, and her prospects for long-term recovery are poor are not considerations.

• No civil servants are in the loop.

• Canada spends a dramatically smaller proportion of its national income on health-care than the US.

• The American conservatives who are fighting health-care reform are filthy hypocritical lying scum.

Please feel free to contribute a comment on this fragment.

Updated: 2009/08/22
Serif / Sans-Serif

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From: Sam J (Aug 22 2009, at 14:27)

s/Canada/Australia/g and the story is quite similar. Same for France, Ireland and the UK...

In fact it's true for pretty much any part of the civilised world I've spent more than a short amount of time in. Of course conversely, the alternative is far from civilised. In fact it can be hard to differentiate between a society which abandons those less fortunate than themselves from the savages who went before them.

Thailand have some of the best and cheapest healthcare in the world so far as I can tell too, so it's not limited to the western world either.

Sam

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From: Martin Heller (Aug 22 2009, at 14:41)

Tell us what you really think, Tim. ;)

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A smart man takes an interesting look at us.