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The above video is the last part of the one hour-long commentary by Keith Olbermann of Countdown, MSNBC, on healthcare reform in the US. You can watch the rest of the commentary here.
It's scary stuff. I did not know how scary it was until I watched Sicko by Michael Moore and now the healthcare reform debate. Over the years I have travelled many times to the US without worrying about healthcare. Now I am afraid to travel to the US unless I have health insurance for travelling out of country otherwise I will be completely broke if I fall ill there.
Here in Canada you are covered from conception to grave for doctors and hospitals. In America you're a commodity to make money off of, from conception to grave and even after you're in the grave as some companies are buying life insurance on their employees and wait until they die and cash in on such insurance. No! Employees and loved ones get nothing, just the employer gets all the money. Healthcare insurance companies in the US are truly the worst kind of vultures, predators and death panels. To ensure that their prey never escapes them they buy off congressmen and even Presidents and that is why there is such opposition to healthcare reform in the US as hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by these so-called health insurance companies in advertisement or in buying off lawmakers.
Lot of lies are being told about public healthcare in Canada and Europe. A big deal is being made about the waiting period for medical procedures, to the point of outright lies. Yes there is waiting for non-life threatening procedures or operations and public healthcare in Canada is not perfect but it is multiple times better than the US for the general public.
As far as waiting is concerned, I will give you a personal example. I rarely go to the hospital because thank God I am doing fine. However, a few years ago I had a very strong chest pain. I had heard about heart attacks so I got in my car and went straight to the emergency room of the local hospital. As soon as I approached the receptionist there and mentioned chest pain she did not waste any time and I was on a stretcher and wheeled to the x-ray room for x-ray and many other tests. In less than an hour I was wheeled back to the emergency area. I had to wait for another half an hour or a little more, in the time it took them to view the x-rays and other tests a doctor showed up. He was all smiles and asked me what I ate for lunch. It turned out it was gas and acidity in the stomach which caused that unbearable pain in the chest or so it seemed. He gave me a prescription for anti-acids and off I went. No cost to me whatsoever. In US it would have cost me maybe $10,000 or more. So it is a big lie that there is a long waiting period.
It is only the very rich people who cannot wait to get non-life threatening procedures who head south to the US and pay for such procedures and sometimes get reimbursed back in Canada. As I said before, our system is not perfect and a lot more needs to be done. We are not as good as some of the European countries but in Canada we are light years ahead of the US. I hope that the US gets the proper healthcare reform because it is the worst healthcare system right now among industrialized nations – the most expensive and highly inefficient for the general public.
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