Steve Crowder on Public Healthcare in Canada
Steven Crowder does a road trip to Quebec and comes back saying all the things I’ve said for years: Waiting times, dirty hospitals, misdiagnoses, doctor and drug shortages, and botched surgeries.
This video is looong, at just over 20 minutes, but I am making it MANDATORY for my readers. There will be a quiz later. So grab a coffee and settle in. DO IT!
Remember what RightGirl always says: “Free” “Health” “Care” is three lies for the price of one.
The health service is a lot worse in the UK. My mother-in-law recently had an operation on her spine in France (yes, she had to go there for treatment rather than wait for months here. The French have the # 1 rated health care service in the world - something Canada and other nations could learn from.
Comment by The Lone Ranger — July 14, 2009 @ 4:08 pm
[...] by Neal But that’s not the point I want to talk about. Canadian health care is. So, go here, watch this, and then get back to me if you have any questions. Watch the whole thing, especially if [...]
Pingback by Conservative Girls ARE Hot! « The Recreant Right — July 14, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
As an expat American living in Canada and experiencing the joys of free. health. care. first hand - I can only watch what is happening in the abomination of the Obamanation and shake my head in disbelief. Surely my countrymen aren’t that stupid, right? But then again, Obama IS president, TARP DID pass, so anything is possible….
Comment by Neal — July 14, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
So what. a bunch of fools make an idiotic video, looked for a clinic that wasn’t open on weekends (all are open here), and found doctors that struggle with english, went to emergency! (ever go to a US one?)
The french speaking was great theatre, great that you fall for it.
Made by fools, for fools.
Plenty of things wrong with our system. This video, was a joke.
Comment by skinny dude — July 15, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
The french speaking was great theatre, great that you fall for it.
Fall for what? They’re in Quebec where the first language for most residents is French. What’s your point?
The whole point of the video is that socialized medicine isn’t the cure-all for the American system. My elderly father waited 10 months, in pain, for a hip replacement.
I used to think our health care system did a pretty good job when it came to emergency care; not so hot with chronic illness. Now I don’t even think emergency care is acceptable. In my city, all hospitals except one closed their emergency depts. Finding a family doctor has become nearly impossible unless you’re one of the lucky winners of the Family Doctor Lotteries that some communities are holding. And I know people who’ve been rejected as patients by the few docs actually taking on new clients simply because they were too sickly — in other words, they could have had a new family doctor if they’d been healthy enough not to need one!
Comment by Natasha — July 16, 2009 @ 8:15 am
The point Natasha, is that the whole thing was clearly a big pile of bull. If this was a french language video intended for a french audience, fine.
But it wasn’t! An 8 year old can figure it out it’s so obvious! Come on. I suspect Right Girl posted it knowing full well it’s a pile of rubbish to goad people.
Anyone that thinks the US style is better than here, is an idiot. I’ve experienced both.
Yes both sides have their huge shortcomings. But come on, make a video with some intelligence and some good points, not this crap for morons…
Comment by skinnydude — July 16, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
But Dude, Crowder - like myself - is from Quebec. Unlike other filmmakers (who shall not be named) with massive budgets and a whole crew to travel with, Crowder gets comped a plane ticket and stays with friends. I do the same thing. Have you ever been to Greenfield Park, which is just south of Montreal? It is predominantly French, like most areas of the province. As someone who knows the slightest thing about Quebec (unlike yourself, clearly) I would be skeptical if he had only found English people to talk to. If that were the case, I would have said the whole thing was staged.
Again, speaking as a Quebecois, I have often paid for services in that province. X-rays, blood tests (yes, they are expensive, but most insurances cover them) and the like. Our own federal leaders (Chretien, Layton etc) belong to private health clinics in Quebec, because they are not illegal there as they are in the rest of Canada.
Illegal. To obtain healthcare. I thought that women had the right to choose what was done to their bodies (and by whom). I guess not. At least not outside of Quebec.
Now, I have often said that the US system is far from perfect, but Canada’s system is NOT the answer. Look to Europe, not here.
RG
Comment by Right Girl — July 16, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
The last time I read, average emergency room wait in the USA is 41/2 hours. Is that really so much better.
Over the last 10 to 15 years we have seen Canadian health care slowly deteriorate to what it is today, over burdened and under funded. I realy do not fault our system, I think it could work beautifully. It is the morons in charge that’s the problem, wasting and squandering our tax dollars. Funding bullshit we do not need and cutting the importants, such as healthcare.
Thank goodness in my part of Canada I have never had to wait longer than 45 mins at a clinic or hospital. I have 2 kids so medical visits are frequent for me, I would totally lose it if I had 9 hour waits.
Comment by Terry — July 16, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
I remember living in Alberta, Terry, It’s kind of a special case. There’s a fee associated. In 1999, when I lived there, a resident payed about $1 per day for the system and their Alberta health card. That was in addition to all the other income taxes. But when I needed an x-ray, I got one the same day, publicly. Actually, I would say that Alberta’s system is not far from Sweden’s, especially when you add the Blue Cross or private workplace insurance to it. And that’s a GOOD thing.
Montreal though is a land of waiting in the hospital. I’ll spare you the gory details of my mother, but the trips to the ER still haunt me.
RG
Comment by Right Girl — July 16, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
I think having to wait 13 hoursa while having a heart attack that killed a third of my heart says it all about socialised medicine.
Comment by Revnant Dream — July 16, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
[...] Steve Crowder on Public Healthcare in Canada [...]
Pingback by Daily Digest for July 16th | Snow Fox Creations : The Blog — July 16, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
Yes RG, I understand that the video makers likely didn’t have a big budget. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that the video was clearly done to highlight Canada’s healthcare system in the worst possible way imaginable. I don’t care if they were ‘comped’ to Quebec, it still doesn’t make their video any more credible.
The truth is, there is no reason why our system couldn’t be vastly improved. Both systems, US, or Canada’s, have very serious systemic problems, and posting idiotic videos like this serve no purpose other than for the herds of lemmings to pump their fists in the air and yell “we aren’t gonna take it anymore!”, for, some reason…
I’ll say it again. Perhaps a more informative video on what is really wrong with our system, without the obvious stupidity, and maybe, maybe we can take it seriously. Because there is plenty wrong with out healthcare system. And my family who still lives in the US, say the same thing about their system.
This nonsense about simplifying the discussion as ’socialized medicine sucks!” is the stuff of idiots.
Sorry.
Comment by skinny dude — July 17, 2009 @ 6:27 am
Aa an Irish person, I can say that any kind of socialised healthcare is a fraud, even if the private sector is allowed some freedom. My mother needed to go to the ER in Dublin. They kept her waiting for eight hours, on a Wednesday night. I needed a vital operation on my eye, which was postponed three times, when I finally got on the list, because they couldn’t find a doctor or a bed. My sight in one eye is permanently damaged. Old people are left on trolleys in corridors for days because there are no beds. We have the lowest life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis in the developed world, because government hospitals leave these patients in dirty rooms and do not practise basic hygiene. Anywhere. People who are dying are left in communal rooms. We have facilities for testing pap smears. The government sends them to the USA. The main mental institution is from the mid nineteenth century. Parents of children with autism are fighting to send them abroad, because the department does not provide adequate treatment. Our health department is a black hole for taxpayers’ money. Value for money, indeed.
My family later got as much health insurance as we were allowed. (The government forces companies to subsidise their competitors - that’s what risk equalisation means.) We go to the clinic, pay, are seen immiediately and treated, and can get the money back from our insurers.
Comment by Elizabeth — July 18, 2009 @ 7:08 am
Oh please. We don’t have dirty rooms where hospitals don’t practice so much as basic hygiene. The hysteria of sheer stupidity knows no bounds! Just because you people in Dublin aren’t capable of basic hygiene in a hospital doesn’t automatically mean public healthcare is a disaster.
There can be found just as many horror stories in the US, as Dublin, (or Canada), we need better discussion as to how best to improve our system, not a bunch of shrieking lunatics screeching about socialism. Get a grip.
Comment by skinny dude — July 19, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
Skinny Dude, I have to ask, why are you commenting on a conservative site with nothing other than “Steven Crowder isn’t nuanced enough” and “your personal experiences don’t matter”? Unless you have anything other than that to add, you’re nothing but a troll.
The USA already has socialised healthcare. 133,000 pages of regulations are not free market. That’s why your point that they also have dirty hospitals and long waiting times doesn’t matter. It’s simply another criticism of a socialised system.
Comment by Elizabeth — July 20, 2009 @ 4:14 am
why am I commenting? Since when is it a requirement to agree fully with something in order to be eligible to voice my opinion? Is there some rule that says, “This is a conservative site! If you have a differing opinion… KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! And don’t you dare say anything! What the hell is it with you devout conservatives that attack the notion of someone expressing their opinion on a public site if they don’t like it? I have seen many conservatives go down this road, I have to assume it’s because they have nothing else. Or my favorite, if one disagrees, then, they’re “angry”.
I had a differing opinion and voiced it. I’m so sorry if it upset you. Maybe where you are freedom of expression is frowned upon, I don’t know.
Comment by skinny dude — July 20, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Skinny, you are welcome here, as you’ve been keeping a civil tone.
The others would do well to keep that in mind.
RG
Comment by RightGirl — July 20, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
Missed this.
“That’s why your point that they also have dirty hospitals and long waiting times doesn’t matter.”
What? I never said this at all. First you attack the idea I even dared expressed my opinion, and now you make things up I never even said??? I suggest, that -you-, are the troll if you’re going to put words into my mouth this way. And to compare USA’s system as a socialized system like Canada’ is sheer nonsense.
Totally different.
Enough of this crap.
Comment by skinny dude — July 20, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Want to reduce our hospital waiting lists? Then stop taking in 250,000 Third World immigrants a year. I’ve been in doctors offices and emergency waiting rooms full of non-English speaking immigrants, many of them elderly parents who have been “sponsored” over and get government benefits, plus access to our heaslthcare without paying a single dime towards the system. Secondly, our nurses and doctors need to be paid more to stop them from defecting to the USA. My wife is a top rated RN (trained in the UK and Canada), and her Americans friends are shocked at her rate of pay compared to theirs.
Skinny Dude has a point. The USA spends more per head on healthcare than Canada.
Comment by The Lone Ranger — July 21, 2009 @ 5:03 pm
This Won’t Hurt a Bit! Steve Crowder Vid on Canadian Health Care…
OK, you Obamacare supporters. Here’s a video created by righto-comedian Steve Crowder for PJTV on the Canadian health care system. [h/t RightGirl] Have fun!…
Trackback by Vocal Minority — July 22, 2009 @ 8:03 am
This video was great! However, the wait times in the U.S. are getting that bad. Many patients with health insurance can’t get primary care providers due to lack of them (we currently have Blue cross blue shield and are on a 9 month wait list to get a primary care provider in our system). Waits for specialists are the same. To get a child with new onset seizures into a pediatric neurologist is 6-12 months in our area (we have 4 pediatric neurologists in a city about 250,000 people). This is no matter what your insurance. The charge we recently incurred for a simple chest x-ray, with health insurance was $1200 (WHAT?)…. All in America.
Likewise, our state recently went to HMO on medicaid and now independent clinics cannot refer these pediatric patients into the larger health systems for evaluation. Example, I had a 9 year old male patient with an arm fracture that needed the arm to be set, had medicaid HMO. Went to ER… waited 8 hours. Then told to go to primary care provider monday for a referral for the arm to be set. The primary care is a rural NP owned clinic (Because no one else would take the kid for primary care because of his medicaid). When the clinic attempted to refer the kid and of the two major health systems, one refused because the clinic was ‘connected’ or part of their system. The other, had not contracted with any Medicaid HMO’s so they would not have to take the kid! We looked for 7 days for someone to set the arm and finally had to send the kid 3 hours away for his broken arm to be set. WRONG! The system is so messed up and it is due to the government and to insurance companies…. let the free market and capitalism reign and costs will go down…
Example, if every insurance and the govt. quit paying for prescription medicaions the costs would drop like a rock because the drug companies still want to sell drug. Lipitor would be 10$ per month instead of 170$ (generic) per month.
Enough rambling. Great video. BROKEN system here and abroad.
Comment by Onlinenursing — August 1, 2009 @ 11:17 am
Why are you so against improving a lousy system? You’ve heard all the evidence if you’re still against the improvement one has to ask why?
Comment by t — August 13, 2009 @ 2:20 am
Alberta Physician:
1. Quebec does have bad healthcare. They are the only province that didn’t sign the reciprocal billing agreement with the other provinces. Many in Quebec also want to leave Canada sort of like Texas wanting to leave the US. They tend to have Physicians that can’t leave the province due to lack of portable credentials. If you want to see Health Care at its worst in Canada go to Quebec. But I would still take their crappy system over your system even on Sundays.
2. This young punk thinks he is such a smart little conservative but:
a) The wait varies on triage scores because this is an ER department. Your friend said the triage system decides how important you are. I am sorry that he has such a self esteem problem. (is he unemployed as you said he has so much time on his hands?) Triage actually tells them how quick you need to be seen hence the 2 to 10 hours. b) What did you expect them to do with a fractured clavicle? In almost all cases of fractured clavicles you don’t need any treatment. c) Crowder has no idea what was wrong with the lady with the blocked arteries in her legs. Her daughter was ranting and there is no proof of what happened to the mother. They could have gone to the great US for care, probably by car, but they chose to stay in the Canadian system so your argument is crap. d) The mother with the baby is dead wrong about how long gastro should last in babies. She states it like a fact that a gastro in a baby should only last 12 hours. Gastro can last 9 days and peak at day four. She saw a nurse in two hours and the nurse would get a doctor immediately if the child was deathly ill. The rest of her story is totally unsubstantiated. In the US if they were uncovered she would either tuff it out at home and replace the baby with another pregnancy if it died or get seen and then get a bill for 20,000 for one week in the hospital and then file for bankruptcy. Even if they had insurance they could have been directed to a certain place for treatment and have been seen by a Physicians assistant or nurse practitioner. The clip also places doubts on the competency of Canadian Physicians in general. Hey Crowder, I and my collegues in our government funded clinic will go head to head on diagnosing/treating patients against any group of Family Doctors in the US. Wouldn’t that make for great viewing? Sort of like the health care Olympics. d) The young male with the acne actually sees a dermatologist for his acne?! Well the problem is that acne should be dealt with in Primary care and only the resistant cases should be referred to a dermapologist. His Pizza face didn’t look that bad….I would get a different hair cut though.
3. You mention California in your rant about what things cost in the US where the government recently was paying government workers with IOU’s?! How much is a Sub Sandwich in IOU’s? Your country is broke because of the Republicans and in part because of your Health Care System (or lack of). You talk of socialism yet your government owns a large share or is the main participant in your banks, auto industry, Medicare, Medicaid, VA, social security etc. You imply that things are better in the US and yet you have laws that let people carry handguns in public and in one state into bars. Your educational system is 25th in the world. People without insurance have a 40% higher risk of dying than those with insurance. Health Insurance in the US is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy. You send your brave soldiers away from their families and put them in harms way for oil and ideology. Guess what when they come back injured you give them the best Health Care in the US….Yes Government run Health Care. Of course if they come back dead you don’t want people to see the coffins as it is too upsetting for the population.
4. As a follow up why don’t you go to a stadium in LA and see the mass free Health Care that should be going to Haiti but is actually in The US because of your great Health Care system.
Crowder…sorry aboutthe punk comment above but you sound like a high school student who drives his dad’s (Sean Hannity being the dad) car and doesn’t have any idea of what is going on in your own country. You could use your time to do some real factual reporting but instead you are part of the problem as to why your country is in real trouble in many areas.
Comment by David — September 20, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
Alberta Physician again
I also wanted to mention the distinction between public and private clinics in Canada is not the same as in the US. There needs to be categories like: totally public where all employees and the Physician are paid by the government, totally private where all services are paid by the patient, and the employees and Physician generate income totally outside the universal system and finallp public private where the employees are paid for by the income that is generated by doing work for the public system. The physician in the public private clinic usually generates income from fee for service charge to the government and must follow the Canada Health Act but they own the clinic and pay the staff. The bottom line is that in your drive by shooting of our system you didn’t look at the private clinic as it wasn’t part of Universal Health Care….ooops.
The above is an important distinction because a private clinic that is charging $900/year to attend is likely a modified public private system. What the clinic does is try to generate more income from a fee that covers non essential service and it like a membership. I think even Crowder would agree that the clinic would go bankrupt treating patients for $900 per year. This membership twist came about in urban centers where the physicians feel poorly reimbursed for services so they came up with fees that walk the line of being legal.
In our clinic of fourteen physicians established in 1954 we are public private and do not use this membership twist because we make two to three times what US Physicians net before taxes.
So the video also failed to realize that primary care and many other physicians in the US are so badly renumerated by private insurance companies that they are leaving practise. So in the end only the wealthy will be able to see a physician in the US as your free market world will mean as the supply goes down the demand and price will go up.
In the end it is all about whether you want health care as a commodity. In a private insurance system the insurance company is all about profit. They don’t train doctors (Medicare does) and 20% of the money goes to overhead. In a government run system they don’t want to make a profit and only 3% of the money doesn’t go for care. So much for Crowder’s inefficeincy argument.
Mr. Crowder I hope you skateboard better than you report on issues.
Comment by David — September 20, 2009 @ 1:49 pm