Smart Girl Nation
Lisa Farrar Wellman from Smart Girl Nation asked me to sit down with her and talk about Canadian health care.
Facing the prospects outlined in HR 3200, many Americans are vastly uneducated on the Canadian system. They truly believe - like they believed about Obama - that it’s all Skittles pooping unicorns up here in our hospitals.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Here is the first half of my interview with Lisa. The second half will be up tomorrow.
Canada seems to be mimicking the UK with its hospital wait times. As far back as 1980 I smashed a brand new motorbike into a car in Manchester, northern England. The dope in the car did a ‘U’ turn without looking behind him so I T-boned him at 30mph. I bounced off the car and lay on the road in the pouring rain for 30 minutes before the ambulance showed up. After that, I was on a stretcher in emergency for two hours before some doctor from Bangladesh with a thick accent could take a look at me and arrange for X-rays. A young girl next to me was in there even longer than me and crying with the pain. I later discovered that she suffered a broken pelvis. There were no MRI’s back then - just X-rays. Thankfully, I didn’t break any bones but was badly bruised and concussed.
two and a half decades later in Canada, I took my youngest (aged 12) to an emergency room in Calgary after he gashed open his arm in a backyard accident. We waited for over three hours before he was tended to and had stitches put in the wound. Three f***ing hours of bleeding, while middle-aged poofters with badminton raquets were admitted before him with strained ligaments.
I only hope it doesn’t get any worse.
Comment by The Lone Ranger — July 28, 2009 @ 5:26 pm