And I make Guestblogger #3!

I'm also a pretty proud Canadian girl, currently living in Ottawa, our beautiful capital city. Since alot of the posts here on Pharyngula center around the news, politics, crazy christian crusades, etc, going on in PZ's fine country, the US of A, I thought that for my first post I would lead a little discussion on what makes its Northern neighbour such a special place... but also, not really that different at all in some respects.

As someone currently on the job market--and looking at a couple of jobs in the great white north--this information could be highly useful, especially for a sociologist.
:-)

Canada? Isn't that where ice hockey, Molson ale and Colin Mochrie come from?

Greetings, greetings!

Between you, Danio, and MAJeff, we would seem to be in good hands. May your tenure here be easy, without stress, and highly enjoyable!

The MadPanda, FCD

Canada? Everyone in Canada -- at least, most -- is so nice and polite and forward-thinking. To an American like myself, it's just unnatural. Seriously, what the hell?
Ha, just kidding. I love Canada and would like to petition its leadership to please invade the United States... call it regime change if you want, it worked us.
Welcome to the blog, LisaJ.
And it is nice at least to see that some folks across the border share America's paranoia about scienctific acheivements.. and staples. Although, honestly, I've always thought staples were somehow out to get me too.

Welcome LisaJ. Hard science in your first post. A good beginning.
I'm a little more familiar with Canada than most of the posters. I lived for 15 years where I had TV feed from Canada (CBC and CTV).

JoJo @ #2:

And don't forget, the telephone.

It's not really the first time Canadians have been afraid of something to the point of irrationality. During the first world war, we were nuts about the idea of German spys spying on us.

Welcome LisaJ, Danio and MAJeff!

But all three are biologists? Darn, I was hoping for a physics geek. I want to find out why the magnetic seal on the fridge door is always harder to open the second time.

Bravo Canadian patriotism! We need all the practice we can get. Living in Montreal's shadow can't be that great though. On the other hand, living in Montreal is faaaantastic, take it from me. Maugre these almost daily thunderstorms/acts of divine pique.

All hail Danio, Lisa J & MAJeff

Embarassing confession time:

With all the academics here, and really sharp minds (barring ALL trolls), it can be intimidating to post. Of course you people can be a little insulated in your academia and so your paradigm is much different from a good many of us - those of us who love science and are ambivalent to theism but don't come from science backgrounds.
PZ and many of you are essentially mentors. The funny thing is the person I'm most intimidated by intellectually is Skatje. When I think back at my meager cognitive gifts when I was her age (hell, even now 29 years later) & I compare myself to her and I am mortified.
I don't know how much credit PZ & Trophy Wife™ can take for her gifts A lot, I assume), but here's to you Skatje; the world is obviously your oyster.

Welcome, Lisa!

Sweet! A fellow Canuck in charge!

ha, Hank! Something we all battle with every day. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll try to give the physics thing a go at some point. I'll see what I can do. Although I am definitely not a physicist, I still find alot of it very cool!

Lindsay , I am embarrassed to say that I still have not visited Montreal! I've been here in Ottawa for almost 2 years, and all of our weekends off tend to be trips closer to Toronto, which is where our families live. Soon though, I promise! It's apparently a fantastically beautiful place.

Ever since 911, even my country has been plagued by irrational fear of terrorism...

The previous wave of irrational fear in the USA that I recall (and which is still going on to some extent) is the fear of strangers abducting children. A kid is far more likely to get killed by a drunk driver while walking along a sidewalk, but not many people ever think about the real odds.

-jcr

I thought Canada was just a myth made up to scare children....anyways...

But all three are biologists? Darn, I was hoping for a physics geek. I want to find out why the magnetic seal on the fridge door is always harder to open the second time.

Well this might be totally off, as I am a Biology student myself, but I thought it was because of the changing air pressure or something that the fridge creates to try and conserve energy and keep the air cold. It makes sense with the whirring that starts up to me.

Re: fridges being harder to open the second time.

It's pretty simple. Warm air is less dense than cold air. When you open the fridge, you let warm air into it. and when you close the door, that air will cool down, reducing its pressure. The seal around the door isn't perfect, so the pressure will equalize in a minute or so.

So, open the door once, the pressure on both sides is the same and the door opens easily. Close it and try it again, you have a pressure differential to overcome.

-jcr

Ah, excellent! A thread where Canadians can poke fun at Americans in a desperate bid to prove to everyone, anyone, that we *are* different! We are, damn it!

...oh, and take our Molson beer. All of it. Please.

Welcome, Lisa!

I had some American friends visit me in Vancouver last week, and the 23-year-old excitedly recounted this tale to me:

"I was walking in the neighbourhood, and I came to an intersection. I walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stopped to wait for the traffic to clear. But suddenly there was no traffic; then I noticed that the cars travelling in BOTH directions had stopped for me. Not only that, the drivers were POLITELY WAVING FOR ME TO WALK ACROSS. I mean, this is weird!"

And to my mind, Vancouver has *bad* traffic!

Thanks Azdak!

Yes, we are very special! Agreed re. the beer. I traveled to Europe 2 years ago and could drink their beer all day long if I wanted to. Still can't swallow down a sip of our stuff. I am a girl though who generally prefers girly drinks, that may have something to do with it.

stefan extended an invitation: I love Canada and would like to petition its leadership to please invade the United States...

Um, you might want to wait a bit. Currently we are wriggling under the unwelcome attentions of Bush Lite, a minority Conservative government. Now I'd compare the two regimes to two drunks -- one is an easily angered narcissist with a 45 revolver and an attitude, while the other is a drunk who sits at your table without asking permission and spends the next 2 hours telling you how special he is and how lucky you are to have him.

Yes, one is better than the other, but neither is Josiah Bartlet.

Wait a bit. We will probably be getting a new bunch about the same time you do.

Noni

could you comment on universal health care. I hope we get it here. If i were the pres i would put togther a team and send them around the world to pick the best parts of other countries plans.

phil, Laurel, MD
Go Brights!!!

At JoJo #2:

Yes, and it's also where curling, Labatt blue and Keanu Reeves come from. Meh.

Woot! The women are taking control!

Great to see a fellow Canadian here. Just wanted to note another way Canada isn't so different...

I'm a grad student at the U of Saskatchewan (in Saskatoon--yes, I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) and last fall some undergrads tried starting an atheist group with which I was peripherally involved. They had trouble getting approved ("Is this some kind of hate group?"), getting a loan from the bank, and when they had their first event (live feed from the Atheist Alliance International conference) we were only able to book a table for one day despite there being several unused tables much of the week (these tables being in the "Tunnel", a major underground walkway between the arts building and the food court/bus mall). The local paper wanted to charge them thousands of dollars for a small ad when "Campus for Christ" gets free full page ads for their events. No newspaper ad either. Consequently attendance was very poor and as far as I know the group just kind of crumbled after that.

And the kind of vile, hate you get spewed at you just standing at the atheist table is just unbelievable. I suppose only the crazies stop to chat though.

On the plus side I did manage to get interviewed by the local news about a university event while wearing my "God is Imaginary" t-shirt. Got about 5 seconds of air time on the news that night.

Yes, we have universal health care here in Canada. It's something I've always lived with, and I really feel for you folks in the US who don't have this luxury. It must be really tough, and just a stress that you shouldn't have to deal with when you're in need of medical attention.

I know that there are some issues in our Health Care system, and apparently it's gone somewhat downhill since I was a young kid. We have pretty long wait times generally, so yeah there are some problems and nothing is ever perfect. However, I know i wouldn't want it any other way. I couldn't imagine having to deal with the stress of wondering how I was going to pay for my treatment whenever i need it.
My husband is a new doctor here in Ottawa, just starting his residency, and we've had discussions about this issue. He, and I think alot of his colleagues would agree, that having a universal health care system also takes alot of the pressure off of the doctors and lets them just do their jobs. I couldn't imagine being a doctor and having to turn people away because they didn't have money.

I've always felt that health shouldn't ever be about making money - that people's live and well-being are subject to profit margins is about the most sickening thing I can imagine.

Not only that, the drivers were POLITELY WAVING FOR ME TO WALK ACROSS.

Was your friend from New York or Boston?

Here in San Jose, I see that happen all the time.

-jcr

I've always felt that health shouldn't ever be about making money

So, you want to enslave doctors, nurses, and support staff?

-jcr

Mmm... beer!

It's a pretty diverse beverage, so if you haven't found a style you like, keep looking! And in the interest of international relations, it's long been a pet peeve of mine that ignorant Canadians bash American beer because it's somehow inferior to ours -- all the major manufactured beers are awful, regardless of what side of the border they come from, and both countries have some fabulous micros. I recommend you try some of Unibroue's Belgian-style stuff -- it's likely different from what you've tried, and it's all quite tasty.

Our healthcare system is in serious peril. We've taken it for granted for so long that people seem to figure it will be there for them whether they pay for it or not, and they're opting not to pay for it -- voting for the guys who will cut our taxes and our social programs. Combine that with an aging society, and not enough healthcare workers, and yeah... the system is dying.

Thank Canada for Old Vienna!

Around '92 I saw Peter Frampton or Blue Oyster Cult in a club (doesn't matter which artist, just sad they were playing in a club) and a band from Saskatchewan named the Northern Pikes opened. Their lyrics were silly but they laid down a smokin' groove, kind of like Average White Band meets Grand Funk Railroad.

Lies. Everyone knows the capital of Canada is Toronto.

If its citizens' opinions are to be believed, Toronto is the center of the universe... ;)

John C Randolph,

I should have been clearer - I don't think it should be about making a profit. The focus becomes about how much money you can make and not how much help you can provide.

Wowbagger,

I completely agree with you about the importance of NOT turning healthcare into a business. We are in the midst of a total reconstruction here in Alberta, and it's frightening to hear the thinly veiled threats of partial-privatization ('third way' as we call it) in order to make healthcare 'run like a business'. I am unquestionably one of those people who believes that universal health care is a basic human right and that healthcare should not be expected to turn a profit.

Oh, I shudder at the idea.

While there is absolutely a need to ensure efficiency and responsible allocation of funds (piles and piles and piles of money pours into healthcare up here--still less per capita than the US, though), it is completely insane to attempt to even break even with healthcare. Who are the shareholders? The overall motives should be sound, quality, universal healthcare, not profit margins.

Unibroue! Yes!! Probably the best beer this side of Belgium.

I agree about the micros vs. big breweries too.

I am totally with you guys on how important it is to keep our health care system universal. Azdak, thanks for describing our current health care issues much better than I did. I think it's time for bed :) It is scary to see how health care in Canada is in trouble, and these talks of partial privitization are very scary. I just really hope we don't get taken down that road. Yes, people do need to start getting off of the 'we want lower taxes' train, and realize that we need to pay into the government run systems that mean so much to us, like health care.

I will definitely give Unibroue a try then. Anything Belgian-like I think I can handle :) Thanks!

But our system isn't dying, at least not at the same rate across the country. There is significant autonomy within provinces in terms of the allocation of federal transfer funds. Each province can choose priorities as long as the fundamental layout and availability of services follows the Medicare mandate. Yes, we have an aging population, and yes, this is a huge problem, and I don't really have anything constructive to say about that problem, but I do know that there are dire inefficiencies in the system that can be fixed without resorting to privatization. Why is it that we only ever look to a handful of countries for solutions? We only seem to ever draw comparisons between US, Canada and the UK.

I work in a giant research hospital with all the bells and whistles and top-notch, world-class physicians and technology. This same hospital is also missing several hundred RNs because our provincial government won't allocate enough seats for nursing students to fill the void for the next decade. Because we haven't enough nurses, we spend millions of dollars going overseas to poach from other countries instead of training more nurses here. This isn't even really a question about money...I am surrounded by oil money. Alberta is ridiculously flush, yet we seemingly don't have enough cash to train nurses.

I've totally gone off on a tangent and lost my train of thought. Sorry.

What scares me is that, with privatization, saving people's lives and keeping them healthy become less important than giving shareholders a return on their investments - or making sure the CEO gets a 7-figure bonus on top of an 8-figure salary.

It's kind of a sad state of affairs that for something to be run efficiently it has to be run by those who want to make a profit. I know governments get a bad rap in that area, but it shouldn't be that hard to make universal health care cost-effective.

I suspect, though, the problem would be the ridiculously inflated beauracracy set up to 'manage' it all - e.g. having to cut funding to actual health care in order to pay the salary of the people are brought in to gauge efficiency.

And you were on a roll, too! You make a good point, though, that that state of things varies from province to province. That being said, I think my point about voting for the guys who cut the funding stands whether we're talking about federal or provincial governments. I live in B.C., where a number of social programs have suffered since we went Liberal (sic).

Ugh. The healthcare debates raging here in ALberta are HORRIFYING! THe government here doesn't seem to want to spend money on anything, Especially if it has any benifit for the future.
I find it very strange that people find healthcare arguments that start with "Well, in the US..." convincing. Evry other first world country has universal healthcare for a reason. It saves money, takes stress off the doctors, avoids corruption and allows preventative medicine to flourish. and it doesn't transpose "lotsa money" into "the right to be alive".
Over here in Alberta (or at least amongst my atheist engineering buddies), we make fun of people who are still afraid of terrorists. But then, there are people out here who are damn proud to not be able to speak a word of french. I'll call it even.

I don't think it should be about making a profit.

Ok then, I guess you'll study hard, invent amazing new treatments and sell them at cost? Will you also work in a hospital for the minimum wage?

If so, good for you, but back when I was involved in medical imaging, it was necessary to offer our potential investors a chance to do better than break even, since there were other businesses competing with us for the use of that capital.

-jcr

Actually, we have a creation museum here. I think we lose. hard.
Azdak @#40
Don't get me started on social programs who suffer under dumbasses, I only graduated a coupla years ago...

Welcome LisaJ---Looks like your off to a great start,can't wait to read more but it's late and I'm suffering from a summer cold (4 boxes of kleenex so far) this sucks. Any modern miracle cures from a bioligist standpoint?

JCR@#42
The healthcare system itself should definitely not be about profit, the machines and people that make it work can be, otherwise no-one will.
What were trying to say is that no one should have the choice between save this guy or pocket the money that would have been used and let him die.
The government is allowed to lose money on some programs, healthcare should be one of them.
I'll get some flak for this but have you seen "Sicko"?

Sigh.

JCR, you know exactly what I mean - so don't be obtuse. A privatised health system has to be about profits and not health - it's a business, after all.

There's something inherently wrong with a business where acceptable cost-cutting in the name of maximised profit leads to increased death.

Or do you believe that a privatised system would put people before profits?

Azdak, I think I've found enough floating around in my brain to string together a couple of sentences to complete my original thought...

Okay, inefficiencies: there are too many bureaucrats and too many health regions. There needs to be a standardization of practice and implementation. For example: simple things like IV tubing doesn't match from hospital to hospital. The oxygen prongs used by EMS don't fit on the hospital O2 outlets without an adaptor. Rural hospitals tend to use one drug for heart attack patients that cardiologists in the city won't touch with a ten foot pole, so when these patients come in from out of town, there is a lapse in care while rural drug leaves the patient's body lest the city hospital give a med that will cause fatal interaction (this is a big issue right now in my hospital). Prescription drug prices are completely controlled by pharmaceutical companies (why aren't we buying in bulk and offsetting the costs?? And by bulk I mean 10 years worth, and ALL of it). If all practices were standardized, if all equipment and supplies were universally compatible, and if the government stepped in and controlled the price of medication, we'd save a pile right there.

Standardization across the board makes sense to me.

Don't get me started on social programs who suffer under dumbasses, I only graduated a coupla years ago...

Ah, yeah, it's all uphill for you, mate.

Here's two words to make you feel better about living here, though:

Housing bubble.

Ok then, I guess you'll study hard, invent amazing new treatments and sell them at cost? Will you also work in a hospital for the minimum wage?

yeah, because we don't have anything like a huge federally-funded not-for-profit medical research establishment doing the work understanding diseases that need these "amazing new treatments", right?

Leki, you get my vote.

Does the government not have a say in medication prices? I was under the impression that they did. Or maybe it's just that BC Pharmacare only pays for the cheap knock-off meds...

All I know about Canada is that I spent a sabbatical year at the U of Toronto testing the question of whether man can live on Molson's and peanut butter sandwiches and still function. One can, but just barely. :)

I really liked Toronto and wanted to get a job at UT, but that was about when all the Americans they'd already hired decided they wouldn't hire any more Americans. :(

Privatised health care makes me think about the Ford Pinto which, if you aren't familiar, was a car that had a design flaw that could lead to death for the occupants of the car. Ford knew this but - here's the kicker - chose not to recall the cars because a cost-benefit analysis showed it'd be cheaper to pay out the lawsuits brought against them, even though it meant people might die.

History shows us that, in the business world, profits are considered more important than lives. Why would a profit-focused health care industry be any different?

JCR, you know exactly what I mean - so don't be obtuse.

Yes I do know what you mean, which is why I'm poking holes in the fallacies you're promulgating.

Health care, like any other thing that we need to live (food, or shelter for example), is available in a limited supply, and there is unlimited demand. Now, if you're not willing to dedicate your life to provide health care to others for no compensation, then what is your moral basis for demanding that your health care be provided at others' expense?

Or do you believe that a privatised system would put people before profits?

I observe that a private health care provider profits by serving their customers effectively, if there is competition for that service. Once we make the tragic mistake of letting all health care be controlled by the government, it will be rationed, and there will be no recourse if a bureaucrat decides that you're too old or that your disease is too rare to be worth their while.

-jcr

What were trying to say is that no one should have the choice between save this guy or pocket the money that would have been used and let him die.

That's a choice that is made every day by bureaucrats in government health care monopolies. I don't think they should have that power, either.

-jcr

That's a choice that is made every day by bureaucrats in government health care monopolies.

ignoring of course the fact that it's not the bureaucrat who actually gets to keep the money he/she saves, unlike the case of the corporate executive setting company policy while being heavily invested in company stock/options.

jcr wrote:

My 'moral basis' is that universal health care is possible without the nonsensical strawemn concepts of slavery or penury for the employees. I will, however, admit it's a somewhat unrealistic goal in today's society - but that says more about society than it does about me.

I observe that a private health care provider profits by serving their customers effectively, if there is competition for that service.

Your principle is fine for some thing, John. A diner, for example - you go to one and you don't like the way they cook your eggs, fine; you go down the street to its competitor instead.

What do you do if the cost-cutting to maximise profits at the hospital you were at led to your death?

syntyche,

The difference between the bureaucrat and the executive you propose is that in the case of the bureaucrat, you don't have the option of taking your business elsewhere, nor can anyone else decide that because you got a raw deal, that they'll take their business elsewhere.

-jcr

My 'moral basis' is that universal health care is possible

No, it's not. "Universal" is a marketing term, and it's a lie.

-jcr

What do you do if the cost-cutting to maximise profits at the hospital you were at led to your death?

Do the words "tort law" mean anything to you?

Now, how about "sovereign immunity"?

-jcr

I'm also a pretty proud Canadian girl, currently living in Ottawa, our beautiful capital city.

Ottawa is beautiful. If there are three cities in North America everyone should see they would be New York, San Francisco and Ottawa.

But what I want to know is ... how much DNA do you really think is junk?

The difference between the bureaucrat and the executive you propose is that in the case of the bureaucrat, you don't have the option of taking your business elsewhere, nor can anyone else decide that because you got a raw deal, that they'll take their business elsewhere.

No, you don't really have that option because the next insurance company will treat it as a pre-existing condition and deny you coverage, most likely. And in most countries with universal systems, you absolutely do have the option of visiting a private provider if you don't like what the public system is doing and want to pay for it yourself. So what you have set up is a strawman.

Do the words "tort law" mean anything to you?

Now, how about "sovereign immunity"?

Er, John? I'm pretty sure that if I'm dead words aren't going to mean anything to me at all.

I'm pretty sure that if I'm dead words aren't going to mean anything to me at all.

Now, who's being obtuse?

Government is the ultimate monopoly. There is no greater power imbalance possible than that between a government and an individual. You can only sue the government with the government's permission, and you have to do so in their forum.

It amazes me that proponents of socialized medicine consistently ignore the problem of recourse when the government fucks up, and fuck up they will.

-jcr

if you don't like what the public system is doing and want to pay for it yourself.

You're leaving out that fact that you're already paying for the public system.

-jcr

I have a minor announcement, just that after this post i will be known as BriansAWildDowner. A name suggested to me by Phil Plait.

I do have a quick question for JCR. Do you think that police and firefighters should be privatized as well? If not, why?

How many will it take to substitute PZ??
Ok, two are of the female persuasion (if Danio is as well, then, well - never mind), so - ah, drat, I stop before I get into too deep water here.

Anyone or -thing in particular that needs extra attention, so to keep up PZ's good work?

Welcome LisaJ,I have enjoyed you comments here for a while,cool to have you as a guestblogger !

And remember,many different sciences and non-sciences represented amongst the commenters and lurkers here,so keep it layman-friendly !

//Ever since 911, even my country has been plagued by irrational fear of terrorism//

Here's the great Carlin on the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxzvSbGJ2w

Welcome LisaJ,I have enjoyed you comments here for a while,cool to have you as a guestblogger !

And remember,many different sciences and non-sciences represented amongst the commenters and lurkers here,so keep it layman-friendly !

//Ever since 911, even my country has been plagued by irrational fear of terrorism//

Here's the great Carlin on the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxzvSbGJ2w

Speaking of Canada... Here's an amusing read from late june:
"Special Canada Day Report: How Canada stole the American Dream"
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20080625_501…
'The numbers are in. Compared to the U.S., we work less, live longer, enjoy better health and have more sex. And get this: now we're wealthier too.'

John C. Randolph,
Why don't you deal with the fact that the USA spends more per head on health care than any other large country, and gets worse outcomes in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy than most of them? Hell, in terms of infant mortality, it has worse figures than Cuba!

John,

You didn't really answer the question about how the existence of competition helps me if I'm dead (which wasn't obtuse), or whether you felt that corporations would (or should, or even could) put lives before profits.

Did you read my post about the Ford Pinto? Is that the sort of business model you support?

I can see what you're getting at - a user-pays system; if the government didn't tax us so much we'd be able to afford it. But a low-income person doesn't pay that much tax, so even if they got taxed less they still wouldn't be able to afford it.

Of course, you could be suggesting that if poor people can't afford medical care they should get better jobs - or just die and get out of the way.

Which is a valid opinion - though one that doesn't paint you in a very flattering light.

Comprehensive exposition of "libertarian" political philosophy:

"I'm alright Jack!"

@ Randy,No 60

//But what I want to know is ... how much DNA do you really think is junk?//

Its not a matter of opinion Randy.
Read a book on the issue yet?
Didnt think so.

jcr @ 53:

//I observe that a private health care provider profits by serving their customers effectively, if there is competition for that service. //

That is not entirely accurate in the real world unfortunately.
If you have no hope of being discharged from a private Hospital within say 5 days,which is the time the private health fund will pay for procedure X,you wont be admitted in the first place,to give one example.
Premiums are negotiated with the private health care providers and the government here,and its really just a shameless arms race to ever higher premiums,while waiting periods for services and other restrictions are imposed on customers.

//Once we make the tragic mistake of letting all health care be controlled by the government, it will be rationed, and there will be no recourse if a bureaucrat decides that you're too old or that your disease is too rare to be worth their while//

This is an irrelevant argument,at least where I live,because its not going to happen.
And any private health care provider will treat you like the plague if they think youre going to cost them money,impose 12 months waiting times on you for certain services while paying the full premiums etc.

There is however vast differences between countries with obligatory public health care contributions based on income like e.g. Germany,which has a terrific public health system,or say the UK and Australia with their free NHS/Medicare systems that feature many restrictions on medical service,like long waiting lists for routine surgery,or the exclusion of dental care.These are the country where private health care providers flourish,and rip customers off with ever higher premiums for less service.

Of course, you [John C. Randolph] could be suggesting that if poor people can't afford medical care they should get better jobs - or just die and get out of the way. - Wowbagger

Whether or not he's suggesting it, this is the logical conclusion of Randolph's political philosophy - but he seems to lack the moral courage to say it straight out; and possibly even to admit it to himself.

Nick Gotts,

Yeah, I'm kind of getting that - he dances around the topic, but when it comes down to it he equates money with worth; if you've got nothing then you're worth nothing.

One way to describe it would be eugenics via economics.

It's new to me 'cause I've never encountered a Libertarian before. I've browsed comments where they've appeared and was surprised at the instantly hostile responses from posters who I wouldn't otherwise expect it from. But I'm beginning to understand.

Shane Dielschneider: Hey! Someone else from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan! Although I don't live there anymore, which is not to say that I might not live there again.

The truth is that there is no health care system that is 100% public or universal, and there is no health care system that is 100% private. Of all the first world countries, Canada's system is the closest to 100% public, while America's is the closest to 100% private.

Now, ignoring all considerations except economic, the highest per capita expenditure for health care of all first world countries is the USA. And who is number too in resource outlay? Canada.

And what do our two proud nations get for our bucks, relative to other first world countries? In terms of accepted measures of population health outcomes (such as infant mortality, etc) Canada ranks middling among our first world peers. The US ranks near the bottom. We both pay more and get less back.

The mixed systems that the European nations use blow us both out of the water. The happy medium almost always outdoes either extreme. That said, all the European nations lean more heavily towards the public side (70/30 or so on average, I think, though these numbers are a personal guess not backed up by any evidence I can remember)

Universal Healthcare has pretty much the status of a religion in Canada, equally irrationally cherished, equally unexamined. The social and political reaction to anyone or thing suggesting a change or seeming to pose a threat (even when if, properly examined, it doesn't!) to the system is not dissimilar in tone to Crackergate, though perhaps with a lower density of death threats per opinion.

Granted the concept of universal healthcare has a lot more utility (and evidence to back it up) than the concept of god.

Another difference between Canada and the USA, of course, is gun control. When Canadians decide that violent action is called for on the settling of a dispute, the prefered weapon is a knife. Or, in certain venues, a hockey stick.

But all three are biologists?

Umm...no. Sociologist here.

The main problem with private healthcare as I see it is that the capitalist economic system, for all its proven efficiencies, relies very heavily on rational customer choice to run properly.

Sick people tend not to make for rational customers, and are vulnerable to exploitation.

The main problem with public healthcare in my opinion is resource allocation. The need (demand may be a better word) for healthcare is infinite and grows exponentially. Government resources are not and do not, and governments are not as good as the private sector in increasing revenue streams. So you see healthcare eating up ever greater chunks of total expenditures in public systems as time progresses, without appreciable improvement in overall quality.

MAJeff@78,

Well, a sociologist is just a biologist who specialises in studying the social groups of a particular primate ;-)

Welcome Lisa,

I hail from Belgium, the promised land of universal healthcare, small local breweries in most every town (allthough it's getting harder for them to survive), and politicians who don't give a damn about doing their jobs.
I mean, more than a year after the last elections and we still don't have a government to speak of. Which leaves the door wide open for our right-wing ministry of defense to send freakin' F16's to Afghanistan behind our backs.
Eagerly awaiting your posts. Deaf-blindness sounds really intruiging.

Canada?

The utter tranqil beauty of the backwoods bits
All the rest of the scenery
Vancouver
The Royal Tyrrell Museum near Drumheller
The people

OK, so I was only a tourist, charging around in a bloody great RV for a few weeks.

But we want to go back!

LisaJ : good post. glad to see our friends to the North are doing some quality work.

You may think (correctly) that I a bit strange to say it, but one reason this Floridian loves Canada is that it brought us Clamato juice.

Why don't you deal with the fact that the USA spends more per head on health care than any other large country, and gets worse outcomes in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy than most of them

Oh, believe me I am intensely aware of the costs of health care in this country, and how it's exploded in the decades since the government created the HMOs. We have basically a mercantilist health care industry today, where companies buy the regulations they want with campaign contributions to exclude their competition.

-jcr

whatever, your milk comes in bags

when it comes down to it he equates money with worth; if you've got nothing then you're worth nothing.

Quite the contrary. I believe that people are entitled to keep what they earn, even if they aren't rich enough to buy favors from the government.

Freedom benefits the poor most of all, because the freer they are, the better their prospects for escaping their poverty. That's why poor people streamed to the United States throughout the 1800's and 1900's.

Of course, you could be suggesting that if poor people can't afford medical care they should get better jobs - or just die and get out of the way.

I'm suggesting nothing of the kind. Health care costs are ridiculous in this country; they're ridiculous because of government interference in the market which prohibits competition, and the poor are the ones who suffer from those inflated costs.

It's not the poor who will benefit from socialize medicine. Look at which companies made massive contributions to Hillary Clinton's campaign, and you'll see who expects to profit from finishing the cartelization of the health care industry in the USA. Those guys know which side their bread is buttered on.

-jcr

John C. Randolph@85,

So, what are you advocating, and what are your evidence and/or arguments that it would actually work? And "Gubmint is evil/incompetent", which is all you've provided so far, is not sufficient.

Hi LisaJ,

I'm also in Ottawa! Are you at U of O? Always nice to see that there are other Canadians around, and thanks for the links.

#86:
http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/thumb/a/ab/Canada_milk_3…

Do you think that police and firefighters should be privatized as well?

I'm in favor of both police and firefighters being organized along the lines of the volunteer fire departments we have all over the western states.

When it comes to police in particular, I believe that the public is unacceptably endangered by the militarization of our police departments, which is funded by the "civil forfeiture" laws which basically turn cops into robbers.

I would say that ideally, a sheriff should be an elected (NEVER appointed) official whose authority is limited to summoning the posse, which would be made up of the citizens who live in his jurisdiction. If the police are the citizens instead of a group apart from the citizens, then I think we'd have far less of the us-versus-them attitude that results in people being tasered to death.

-jcr

Canada: Love it! I often tell my wife (and she agrees) that we would make better Canadians that Americans. I prefer almost everything about Canada (let's not discuss the weather ...)

The people (asked to describe a Canadian, on man from Newfoundland I met in Africa (I think?), tired of having to do this, said: "Canadians are like nice Americans," which I thought was pretty apt.)

The politics (generally)
The population density
The landscape (OK, I'm not too hot on Saskatchewan, sorry folks.)
I think Vancouver BC (aside from real estate prices) is the most liveable city in North America.

Vive la Canada!

So, what are you advocating, and what are your evidence and/or arguments that it would actually work?

I advocate freedom, and the evidence that freedom works is obvious from the decline in availability of health care that we've suffered since the federal government invented "managed care" in the 1970's.

Ever visited a VA hospital? Maybe you think that level of care is good enough for everyone, but I sure don't.

-jcr

Sick people tend not to make for rational customers, and are vulnerable to exploitation.

This is true, but a public system is no guarantee that charlatans will be kept at bay. Hell, the national health service in the UK pays for homeopathy!

-jcr

It's not the poor who will benefit from socialize medicine. John C. Randolph

Complete, and obvious, crap. Cuba is the obvious case - a poor country, a dictatorship, complete state medical monopoly, and better infant mortality rate than any other country in Latin America. you offer nothing but bald assertions, because you have nothing but bald assertion to offer.

I advocate freedom,

Bullshit. If you did, you'd be an anarchist, not a "libertarian."

What a bunch of hot air with no substance, evidence, or humanity behind it. I sure hope this vapid blowhard of an ideologue is gone when I get back.

John C. Randolph,

Look, get out of your OWHITUSAC box for a minute, and compare health care availability in the USA, before or after the 1970s, with that in countries of comparable wealth with socialised medical systems. Or, for that matter, with availability in Cuba.

Oh, believe me I am intensely aware of the costs of health care in this country, and how it's exploded in the decades since the government created the HMOs. We have basically a mercantilist health care industry today, where companies buy the regulations they want with campaign contributions to exclude their competition.

That sounds like the market operating to me. Why are you complaining about it ?

Cuba is the obvious case - a poor country, a dictatorship, complete state medical monopoly, and better infant mortality rate than any other country in Latin America.

"Better than any other country in Latin America" (a continent plagued with tyrannies, and rife with poverty as a result) is a rather low bar to clear.

I will also point out to you, that nobody risks their life to get into Cuba. That would be rather like volunteering to be imprisoned for the free dental care.

you offer nothing but bald assertions, because you have nothing but bald assertion to offer.

If you don't believe what I said about who contributed to Hillary's (and now Obama's) campaign, then look it up. It's public record.

http://opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=H04

-jcr

John C. Randolph@91,

So basically, you favour lynch law. Why am I not surprised?

"Better than any other country in Latin America" (a continent plagued with tyrannies, and rife with poverty as a result) is a rather low bar to clear.

If anyone's looking for an illustration of ignorance in action, there you have it.

But what can you expect from someone who thinks Latin America is a continent?

That sounds like the market operating to me. Why are you complaining about it ?

Because buying and selling government favors is fundamentally different from transactions in the free market. Going to the legislature and saying "here's a pile of money, please pass this law which I wrote which will fuck over my competition", is wrong. It's power that the government never should have had in the first place.

That's the moral problem with it. As for the economics of it, buying government protection from competition allows less efficient providers to win over more efficient providers, at the expense of the consumers.

-jcr

That sounds like the market operating to me.

It's a market of a sort, but not a free market.

Why are you complaining about it ?

Because buying and selling government favors is fundamentally different from transactions in the free market. Going to the legislature and saying "here's a pile of money, please pass this law which I wrote which will fuck over my competition", is wrong. It's power that the government never should have had in the first place.

That's the moral problem with it. As for the economics of it, buying government protection from competition allows less efficient providers to win over more efficient providers, at the expense of the consumers.

-jcr

Elected law enforcement officers ?

What a brilliant idea. Rather than worrying about how to tackle crime in their area, and ensuring that those under their command are following the rules, they will instead be sucking up to the local electorate. Got a load of people who think someone is a child abuser, just summon a posse and drive them out of town. Do not bother about investigating allegations of crimes as that would require people with training in forensics. If your posse lacks such a person, I guess that is just bad luck, just beat up a likely suspect and be done with it.

Totally relying on volunteer fire-fighters ? Better hope there is never a serious fire in a chemical factory near where you live. Good as they are, volunteer fire-fighters will never match the skill of specialist fire-fighters, especially those that deal in fighting chemical fires and such.

Re 44 and the common cold

Thirty years ago when I was a young fella still living in England, we had what was called The Common Cold Research Establishment. The Directors cure, as described at a lecture, was as follows.

Go to bed with a bottle of Scotch and a top hat. Put the top hat on the bed post at the bottom of the bed. Drink the scotch until you can see two hats, sleep.

Still the best cure

And welcome LisaJ. I will maybe get into the health care debate after I have read all the posts.

A fellow Canuck from SW Ontario via Alberta and BC

Mike

But what can you expect from someone who thinks Latin America is a continent?

Thank heavens you're here, Pedantic Man! If you hadn't chimed in, someone might have actually addressed the point at hand.

(Yes, I know that Latin America covers a continent, part of another continent, and several groups of islands. Happy now?)

-jcr

John C. Randolph,

Cuba comes 180th out of 219 states and territories - that is, 39 states and territories in the world have a lower infant mortality http://indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?t=0&v=29&l=en.

And since this is an argument about the effectiveness of health care systems, the fact that Cuba is in other respects an unpleasant place is irrelevant - which is of course, why you bring it up. As is your stuff about contributions to US election expenses.
You really don't give a flying fuck about relevance, or the facts, do you?

JCR,

What should people who are too poor to afford healthcare do if they become sick ?

Can we please keep the libertarian pissing match on one thread?

So basically, you favour lynch law.

Nope. I said nothing at all about the posse handing out punishment, or dispensing with trials. Their job would be the same as that of the police today, responding to emergency calls, and placing suspects under arrest when probable cause exists. Since the posse wouldn't be career officers bucking for promotions, they wouldn't have the incentive to rack up as many arrests as they could get.

Of course, for community policing to be feasible, we'll probably have to end the drug war first, which is a worthwhile goal in itself.

Why am I not surprised?<?I>

When you try to put words in other people's mouths, why would you be surprised by your own inventions?

-jcr

Something I feel I should point out here is that even in Canada, your GP runs a private business. It's just that there is only one insurance company, and that company is the government. GP's run their own business, and get paid a fixed rate per procedure. Hell, it's even called the Ontario Health INSURANCE Plan (OHIP) where I come from.

"Nothing annoys me more than when I see someone cut a Scientist's work apart based purely on lack of education and paranoia."

Well, to be fair these nice people aren't so much cutting a scientist's work apart as banging their heads against it. Here in the real world it's fantastic news, though. Welcome aboard!

-TTm

the fact that Cuba is in other respects an unpleasant place is irrelevant

You really don't see the connection?

Cubans get "free" health care. So do prison inmates.

A government that's powerful enough to give you everything you want, is also powerful enough to take anything you have.

-jcr

How many people have the skills to investigate crime ?

Interviewing witnesses and suspects is not a trivial matter. The best police forces put a lot of time and effort into such training, especially when dealing with issues such as rape or child abuse.

How about specialist skill, such as forensic investigation ? How do you ensure your posse has those skills ? What about fraud ? How do you ensure that the posse has the forensic accountancy skills needed to follow a money trail ? How about computer specialists with the skills to recover data from scrubbed drives ? What about helicopter and fixed-wing units ? How do ensure you have a qualified pilot with an adequately equipped aircraft ?

What's worse than a troll?
Two trolls.
What's worse than two trolls?
n trolls.
What's worse than n trolls?
n+1 trolls.
What's worse than n+1 trolls?
A libertarian troll.

Please stop feeding it. Use Firefox 3 with the Greasemonkey plugin and "plonk" the bastard. I'm begging you.

Thank heavens you're here, Pedantic Man! If you hadn't chimed in, someone might have actually addressed the point at hand.

First, I'm a woman. Second, the only question at hand was the extent of your ignorance and willingness to evade reality. To echo Nick Gotts, you really don't give a flying fuck about relevance, or the facts, do you?

(Yes, I know that Latin America covers a continent, part of another continent, and several groups of islands. Happy now?)

Happy I'm going away and won't have to read through your silly comments.

Have a nice weekend, all!

JCR,
If you are not going to address the abundant evidence that socialised health care can be effective, and you're not going to answer Matt Penfold's question about what someone too poor to afford treatment should do, but are going to keep up your diversionary tactics, the only and obvious conclusion is that you actually know you are wrong, but lack the moral courage to admit it.

Congrats on the guest spot, Lisa J.

I don't think most Americans understand that health care here in Canada is run provincially, and is not an entirely federal program. Here in Nova Scotia, there is little evidence of the long wait times experienced elsewhere (with the exception of hip replacements), and I'm a member of that dreaded older demographic which is beginning to hog more of the resources (haven't needed it much myself, thankfully), so I know a boatload of people 'in the system'. Canada is huge, geographically, and you cannot extrapolate what the country is like from experiences in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, or Saskatoon (and that certainly includes responses to atheism!).

Also, doctors and nurses here are not crying for lack of money - nurses are unionized and are very adept at keeping their pay rates high, and doctors are frankly rich people. Keep in mind, they know when they decide on a medical career what the deal is, and they still continue to go for medical degrees in order to practice here. And before someone brings it up, since around 2004, more Canadian trained doctors have returned from the US than have moved there (source: Stats Can.).

Are there problems? Sure there are, and they need fixing, and Canadians need to put some politicians' feet to the fire to get these problems solved.

Now, anecdotes are not data, I know, but I have a whole slew of relatives in the US, mostly in Florida and Michigan, chunks of the family that emigrated sixty and 100 years ago. They are working poor to upper middle class in income, and the horror stories I hear from them regarding the health care they can't afford to get, or are denied by insurance companies for pre-existing conditions, or for procedures not considered necessary (like that little bladder repair surgery that alleviates incontinence frequently experienced by older women), are heart-breaking. The few of them who managed to retain dual citizenship (mostly the very elderly) have with deep sadness left their families and moved back to Canada, specifically to deal with their health issues.

Canada's health care system needs work, but frankly, the US system is not a model I'd ever want to see get a toe-hold here.

So I went into this bar in DC, just said, 'Hi, I'm Canadian', and stood there in amazement while this brawl over health care broke out all around me...

To the US types requesting we invade: hang in there. Our current regime is kinda... ummm... like yours, actually. Ideologically, anyway. You might be better off waiting it out 'til Nov. 7...

Well, might be. You know how it is. We're Canadian. So even our neocons are slightly less neocon. Or at least marginally more polite about it (tho' this may well only be because they're a majority government, at present). They might be an improvement, I guess. But then, this is only saying so much.

Re Ottawa/Montreal: both are fine towns. Live in the former, do get to the latter, on and off. And we should probably do an Ottawa Pharyngufest some time, actually, now that you mention it. Seems there's a bit of a crowd, now.

... erm: $_ =~ s/majority/minority/.

AJ Milne @ 122: "So I went into this bar in DC, just said, 'Hi, I'm Canadian', and stood there in amazement while this brawl over health care broke out all around me..."

Just what I was thinking :) Who knew health care issues would cause such a stir.

Yes, an Ottawa Pharyngufest would be a great idea. We could get the Ottawa and Montreal folks together even.

Epinephrine, yes I am at UOttawa. You too?

Thanks for the welcomes everyone!

You're leaving out that fact that you're already paying for the public system.

Sure, because it's completely irrelevant to the argument. You stated that there is no choice. There is in many universal of systems. That it may or may not be expensive for those that choose it is neither here nor there.

You're leaving out that fact that you're already paying for the public system

In many universal healthcare systems the private sector is effectively subsidised by the public. Most healthcare professionals start there careers in the public sector after being trained in publicly funded universities and colleges. The public healthcare system then further trains them, at public expense. Some of there highly trained staff then leave to work in the private sector, without the private sector paying anything to the public sector to recompense for all the training their staff had at public expense.

Yes, an Ottawa Pharyngufest would be a great idea. We could get the Ottawa and Montreal folks together even.

Hey, that works.

I'm thinking as a fair number of the contingent are academics, maybe late Septemberish? Give the faculty types time to get through the pre-term windup stress, student/researcher types time to settle into classes and labs? Slip it in between first week and midterms?

(It's nothing on me, personally... September is just back to school month for my kids... Though I am getting out of here for a bit of vacation mid-August and real soon now.)

This is going to seem out of left field, but the oil filter industry is a good example of how competition can (and often does) fail. Consider Fram versus Purolator. Independent tests have shown repeatedly that Purolator's filters are markedly superior in their construction and filtering capability. Despite this, Fram continues to gobble up market share. They negotiate deals with retailers to be the exclusive filter line on the shelf, and they dump millions into marketing. Purolator, on the other hand, puts their money into making a better filter. Both products are competitively priced, yet Purolator is taking a beating from Fram. Most consumers don't know which product is better, they just succumb to clever marketing and the fact that Fram is often the only brand on the shelf.

How does this help consumers? Slick advertising and back-room deals con them into buying an inferior product. One that ultimately costs them more in terms of engine wear and damage. There's your free market in action.

Private business does not have to provide the best product or service for customers in order to thrive. They just have to excel at separating customers from their money while making them think they got some kind of deal.

amphiox said, in part: The mixed systems that the European nations use blow us both out of the water. The happy medium almost always outdoes either extreme....Universal Healthcare has pretty much the status of a religion in Canada, equally irrationally cherished, equally unexamined.

A couple of years ago Canadians picked as the Greatest Canadian a guy Americans probably never heard of, Tommy Douglas (1904 - 1986) an obscure member of parliament in one of our poorest provinces, beloved for being the "Father of Medicare".

you mention ...the mixed systems that the European nations use blow us both out of the water. The happy medium almost always outdoes either extreme... I'm glad you brought this up, because treading the often contradictory middle way is a Canadian specialty -- we say "Canada is a country which works in practice, but not in theory." Grand example -- the Notwithstanding Clause. So why the fundamentalism about health care?

I believe it's because of the constant pressure from across the border. We resist the least incursion for the same reason the Netherlands have dikes. Canada has a number of institutions which rightly resist the pressure of the biggest profiteering nation in the world. One is our health care system, another is the CBC, which singlehandedly raises the effective Canadian IQ by 10 percentage points, even among people who don't listen to it.

Both these institutions are routinely criticized by the private sector, (big surprise) and fiercely supported by Canadians, who have some idea what their loss would entail.

Noni

another is the CBC, which singlehandedly raises the effective Canadian IQ by 10 percentage points, even among people who don't listen to it.

Ah, "As It Happens." I used to listen to that quite frequently on Minnesota Public Radio (which is itself a pretty damned good public radio network).

Cool another Canadian and from Ottawa to boot!

I actually just moved to Ottawa recently (from Kitchener originally), been here for 5 months now but I've been so busy I haven't really had the chance to meet any local skeptics/atheists. If there are any meetings or things like that coming up, I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks! And I look forward to seeing pharyngula done Canadian style.

Ah, "As It Happens." I used to listen to that quite frequently on Minnesota Public Radio (which is itself a pretty damned good public radio network).

I still reckon BBC Radio 4 takes a lot of beating.

Yes, late September would work for me. Who else wants to join in the Ottawa/Montreal Pharyngufest?

Jon. I also moved to Ottawa from SW Ontario. I lived in London for 7 years. I love London too.... but yes, Ottawa is a step up in beauty.

My girlfriend, until recently, worked for an American insurance company that keeps their offices in Canada. I just thought I'd share that, you know, to complicate the issue.

SW Ontario is beautiful, although Ottawa has charms of its own. Still, I miss Cambridge sometimes. I spent 20 of my 21 years there and the majority of my friends still live in the area.

I moved here with my girlfriend and I've made a couple of friends here and there but I need to meet more local atheists and skeptics! A Pharyngufest would be perfect! Do you have a blog of your own or perhaps know a site where Ottawa atheists congregate so I can keep ahead of this while it's getting planned out?

"I would say that ideally, a sheriff should be an elected (NEVER appointed) official whose authority is limited to summoning the posse, which would be made up of the citizens who live in his jurisdiction."

This is the kind of thinking that made me leave the Libertarian Party.

While one poster described this as lynch law, it would perhaps be better described as 'gang rule.' After all, how many elected sheriffs would we need to cover a major urban city? What kind of posse is the sheriff of a particularly bad neighborhood going to have? Crips and Bloods arresting each other? Whichever gang controls the Sheriff controls the law. That's how it used to work, guys, back in the feudal paradise days.

Or do we call out the whole City of New York Posse for a burglary? If the sheriff decides what crimes to address, I can assure you he will quickly become very, very rich.

So many Libs seem to believe we all live in small rural towns filled with sturdy yeomen with hearts of gold. Either that or they just assume they will be the ones in charge. They simply canno recognize that good ideas taken too far become bad ideas.

But then, that's hardly unusual.

I'd like to get in on the Ottawa Pharygufest!

Hmm... Ottawa eh?

I might consider driving over from North Bay...

My girlfriend, until recently, worked for an American insurance company that keeps their offices in Canada. I just thought I'd share that, you know, to complicate the issue.

They probably are here because they like not having to provide basic health insurance as part of the employee benefits!

US businesses have even attempted to claim our health care system constitutes an illegal subsidy to businesses in Canada under NAFTA because Canadian companies don't need to provide basic health care insurance.

Hmm, should have previewed my #137. The first paragraph is quoting Jams in #132.

the Hospital of Sick Children

Yes, I've heard of that, and I have always wondered, where is the hospital for well children?

Do you have a blog of your own or perhaps know a site where Ottawa atheists congregate so I can keep ahead of this while it's getting planned out?

I can also set up a thread on mine, if that makes sense.

1) "Any govertment big enough to give you what you want is big enough to take it all away." The problem is, Goldwater didn't realize that the likely alternative would be businesses big enough to give me everything I want, but unlikely to do so (willing, as a matter of fact, to end my life so they can get what they want). Small businesses want to be big businesses - that is their goal. Businesses are there to make money - it's just that making money isn't the only source of good for a society, and so when making money is the primary (if not exclusive) goal, other things are likely to lose. Unfortunately, some of them are probably people.

2)#126 - the problem is that that competition happens lots of places (elections, for example). The only ones who can think and ask questions are us. If we make bad choices, it would be better to figure out why and how not to do that, rather than to hope that someone else can save us from the consequences of our choices, because they can't (and even if they could, they probably wouldn't). Other forms of health care won't change the need for informed choices, just the methods and constraints on such choices.

I don't think the choice between the VA and HMOs as health care options is a reasonable one. Other governments are able to provide better health care, either using the market or not, so the VA's indifference is not an inherent consequence of government-mediated health care. Perhaps something else in the US might be the problem, or with us as voters - that would seem to be the likelier option.

Responding to JCR:

That's a choice that is made every day by bureaucrats in government health care monopolies.

In the specific case of Canada, this is rarely true. The choices are made by the person's own doctors and not by bureaucrats. There are treatments the system won't fund, but then in the US system, there are treatments that funders won't fund too. And, in Canada, we don't have people who get paid specifically to routinely review treatment plans and deny coverage, the way insurance companies and HMOs do in the USA.

It is a serious mistake to think that private payers are any less bureaucracies than government systems.

The difference between the bureaucrat and the executive you propose is that in the case of the bureaucrat, you don't have the option of taking your business elsewhere, nor can anyone else decide that because you got a raw deal, that they'll take their business elsewhere.

JCR assumes that folk can always come up with the cash. If you depend on private insurance and your insurer balks at a treatment, what do you do? As others have pointed out, you now have a 'pre-existing condition' and no other insurer will touch you. Sure there's Medicaid and Medicare in America, but then you're up against American style bureaucracies, which are among the more hidebound in the Western world (since Americans don't trust governments, they festoon their bureaucrats with regulations and the gripe because the bureaucrats aren't flexible!).

Now, Canada's system is pretty much unique in the West in being a single payer system (at least for hospital and most medical) while most Western countries run parallel systems, with a universal public health care system supplemented by a system of private insurance for those who want to and can afford it, to provide more bells and whistles, quicker treatment (jumping the queue) and the like. In Britain, for instance, the NHS covers everyone and about 10% of the population carry private insurance.

Since Canada's system is one of the more expensive and since only the presence of the USA among the Western countries keeps us from being last among Western countries in many health care measures, it might be that we should consider a more mixed system. However, the one thing there's absolutely, positively no rational basis whatsoever for considering is the US system, which is the most expensive by far and the least effective among Western countries. It is only ideology or business self-interest that could commend the US system. Certainly, a business-like cost-benefit analysis would condemn the US system.

Now, how about "sovereign immunity"?

You can only sue the government with the government's permission, and you have to do so in their forum.

JCR seems determined to live up to the stereotype of the American who knows nothing about any other country and thinks he can safely assume that everyone else has adopted American law (along with their health care system, their legal system is another field where America outspends the world and has little to show for it). In Canada, hospitals and other such institutions can be sued for negligence, and are regularly. Someone not wholly ignorant of our system and wholly convinced he isn't ignorant would know this.

Now, if a government has simply decided as a matter of public policy that some treatment won't be covered, they can't be sued for that. Not because they're a government, but because courts don't like to intervene in essentially policy matters. But then, an insurance company that decides it won't cover a certain treatment as a matter of policy can't be sued for that either, as long as their insurance contracts are clear about that.

It's not the poor who will benefit from socialize medicine.

The actual experience of the Western world is that they do. In no Western country is there a greater gap between health outcomes for rich and poor than there is in America. But, yet again, JCR demonstrates that he knows nothing about any system other than his own which he views entirely through radical-libertarian-coloured glasses. For folk who are bit more cosmopolitan it makes no sense to suppose that if the most private sector dominated health care system in the West is also the least effective and most costly, then one should fix it by making it even more private sector dominated.

I advocate freedom, and the evidence that freedom works is obvious from the decline in availability of health care that we've suffered since the federal government invented "managed care" in the 1970's.

Actually, the evidence from other countries is that a universal public system with private insurance for those who want and can afford a more lavish service works better than America's system, which is driven by shareholder value in the health care industry combined with a government sector run by people who believe government is an inherent evil (as JCR apparently does, as obviously a radical libertarian). JCR would know this if he had clue 1 about other countries, but he doesn't.

Among the foreign countries JCR is ignorant of is the past. His idea of volunteer fire and police departments has been tried in the past. That's why civilized countries these days don't rely on them any more. The US had JCR's libertarian paradise, or as close as anyone has ever got, back in the late 1800s. We have the societies we do today in large part in reaction to the conditions that kind of society produced.

BTW, it is true nobody's dying to get into Cuba, but then nobody is dying to get into the libertarian paradise of Somalia either, where they're carrying on a decades long experiment in having no government at all. It's results are not entirely surprising.

@ #8 Hank Fox:
Unless you have some strange kind of fridge I haven't heard of, I don't think the fridge has much of a magnetic seal. Rather, it's harder to open the second time due to air pressure. When you open the fridge the first time, the air inside warms up. When you close it, the air inside is sealed off and is cooled down, which lowers it's pressure. So now the pressure outside the fridge is greater than that inside the fridge.

#80: Well, a sociologist is just a biologist who specialises in studying the social groups of a particular primate ;-)

I am reminded of an article in the most recent Reports of the NCSE, in which someone whinges that Michael Behe is not a biologist, he is a biochemist. Now, you won't catch me talking up Michael Behe, but that remark strikes me as off-target. I consider biochemistry to fall under the more general heading of biology.

It's great to see another fellow Canadian on Pharyngula. Especially one who lives in my hometown area. Good luck ...

Alan (in Las Vegas) Macdonald

Re: The center of the universe

I live in a town called North Bay which is a 3.5 hr drive north of Toronto. It's funny how perspectives change as you get further from Toronto. Many people in my neck of the woods think nothing of driving to Toronto for an appointment or an overnighter to take in a show or some shopping. Going the other way, though, the distance becomes extremely prohibitive. "North Bay! That's up around the artic circle or something, isn't it?"

As an astronomer I have driven to Toronto and environs to participate in public outreach sessions. However, I've had RASC Toronto Center members explain to me that they couldn't attend our star party because it was only 4 days long and that just isn't long enough to justify such a journey.

And not only but also... just because our town has "North" in its name doesn't mean we are actually located north of all other population centers. We are at approximately 47 degrees north. Since the longest stretch of the Canada - US border lies along 49 degrees, that puts us south of the vast majority of the rest of Canada and Canadians.

I have relatives who think nothing of commuting 1.5 hrs or so every damn day but just don't know how they could exist if the nearest supermarket was more than 20 minutes away.

Okay. I think I'll take a pill, now.

Little off topic.. well a lot off topic, but was wondering if you read the papers today/yesterday LisaJ.

Not sure if most of you heard of that horrific event in Manitoba where a young 22 year old was stabbed then beheaded by a 40 year old while travelling on a bus.

Normally I wouldn't repeat such a disgusting story, but what's really got me past the boiling point are those freaks over at PETA who have taken out a full page ad (which wasn't directly printed but was reprinted as a story line by a lot of local papers), comparing this crime to their delusional viewpoint on animals.

Probably needs it's own thread....

@Dagger

Yeah, and these guys too.

This pissing match about healthcare and crime fighting is really illrelevant guys. Nothing like that is going to happen here in this country (USA) any time soon. My university has degrees in firefighting and police work and another local university just built a multimillion dollar forensics training lab (a whole college unto itself). No we are not getting rid of our municipal police. The biggest abuses of law enforcemnt in my county come from the sherriffs office (elected) and the county jail (run by the sherriff.)
As far as healthcare goes? Not in my lifetime will I see universal coverage. the $ is just toooo gooood for those vested in making a profit and the right wing will see to it that it stays that way.

This pissing match about healthcare and crime fighting is really illrelevant guys. Barklikeadog@149

"Illrelevant" - I like it! Seriously, it's highly relevant to the USA/Canada comparison that is the topic of this thread, and while you may have given up hope of getting universal health care in the USA, many of us from other countries with something approaching such a system (such countries do exist, you know), are facing systematic attempts to undermine them, often headed by US "health providers", and justified by somewhat toned-down versions of the garbage John C. Randolph has been spouting.

I'm in favor of both police and firefighters being organized along the lines of the volunteer fire departments we have all over the western states.

What the fuck?! So you expect the firefighters and police to "study hard, invent amazing new [vehicles, weapons, tactics] and sell them at cost?" Will you also work in a jail/police station/fire station for the minimum wage?

Seriously, what the fuck is with your head when it comes to this shit?

Welcome guest bloggers! And for those of you who advocate greasemonkey and its related toys, which I don't seem to be sophisticated enough to use, please notice that the "posted by" line is now at the TOP in BIG letters. YAY! Thanks ever so! When I see a troll now, it's really easy just to blow by it - not perfect perhaps, but a HUGE improvement.

Yeah, I read about the WBC and their plans to protest McLean's funeral too, Jams. What a vile bunch of little pricks.

Welcome Lisa. Sorry this is a few days late; I've got a backlog of blogging buried under a backlog of work.

I've been chatting with an e-Friend from Moncton for 4+ years now. He's a good 15 years younger than I am, but we seem to have a lot in common when it comes to how we think people generally should live their lives. Specifically, they should place more value in critical thinking, and at least *try* to utilize empathy as often as possible.

Anyhoo, I've very much enjoyed getting to know this guy, who's interested in politics. We have slightly different views when it comes to religion, but respect each other enough so that it's not an issue.

When it comes right down to it, he's just like I am: live your life how you want, advocate the values you want - but don't do so at the cost of preventing others from doing the same.

I guess I just mean to say this: of the Candians I've known in my life, they all seem to be very similar to the Americans I've known: some are stupid, some are not. I think they generally have slightly different views when it comes to "How a Nation should conduct itself and its affairs", but are otherwise pretty similar.

Most of the stereotypes seem to be exaggerations at best.

143:

@ #8 Hank Fox:
Unless you have some strange kind of fridge I haven't heard of, I don't think the fridge has much of a magnetic seal. Rather, it's harder to open the second time due to air pressure. When you open the fridge the first time, the air inside warms up. When you close it, the air inside is sealed off and is cooled down, which lowers it's pressure. So now the pressure outside the fridge is greater than that inside the fridge.

You are correct, I think, about why the door is harder to open the second time, but it is true that most refrigerators do have a magnetic seal for the "weather stripping" around the door to keep the cold in (and have for many many years). A lot of new house doors also now have magnetic weatherstripping to improve their insulation value.

@#146 Blondin:

Tell me about it.

-Signed A Chisholm Boy

I think 143 and 155 have answered the question at 8 correctly. This problem is really a bitch with freezers that run at -80 C. If they do not have some kind of pressure equalizer (and it is not frozen over) they can be impossible to open a second time. Have to wait a hour or more between openning.

Nick @#150. My response to the irrelevancy of the issue is only for us Americans. The system isn't going to change soon, here in the good ole US of A. I agree that it would be a fine thing if we could change the system for the better but, indeed, I don't have much hope.

When I lived in Britain, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to pay for my Doctors Visit or the Medicine when I was really sick. I even tried to argue that I should pay since I was American & didn't pay British taxes. I liked it and would appreciate a workable solution here. Too often my family and I are denied payment because of a clerk at the insurance agency doesn't think we need it.

Recently I've been reading comments and noticing JCR and thinking "okay, he's not exactly thinking along my lines, but I can see his point" and having this conflict in my mind of "but I detest the guy, though I can't remember why". Now I do. Damn he's an idiot.

Freedom benefits the poor most of all, because the freer they are, the better their prospects for escaping their poverty.

Ah, yes, the freedom for both the rich and poor to live under bridges. Does he really think that class mobility would increase in Libertopia? A land where gov'mt is pure unadulterated evil but business monopolies and oligarchies rule with benevolence. Sigh If it's not religious fantasies it's just this kind of magical thinking that drives me nuts. Posse? Seriously dude? No doubt they travel around on the ponies -- everyone has one, of course.

Yes, an Ottawa Pharyngufest would be a great idea. We could get the Ottawa and Montreal folks together even.

Epinephrine, yes I am at UOttawa. You too?

Thanks for the welcomes everyone!

Woohoo! I've been so jealous of the Pharyngufests elsewhere, an Ottawa get together would be awesome.

No, I'm no longer in school, I finished the collaborative graduate program in neuroscience between Carleton and Ottawa U. a few years back (2004), and am working now (at our federal department of health as it happens, though I'll abstain from getting involved in the brawl about healthcare).

@Jim Re:freezer

Wait a second. One step at a time.

1) I open the fridge once when the air inside has had a long time to get cold. This is the "first opening".

2) The air inside warms (or some cold air falls out and warmer air gets sucked in) while I have the door open.

3) I shut the door.

4) I wait a period of time.

5) I try to open the door again.

ok, the theory is that the air pressure inside the fridge decreases as the air cools, making it harder to open the door a second time. There's something missing here. Consider:

- If step 4 lasts for a short period of time, the air will have chilled only slightly, making the door slightly harder to open.
- If step 4 lasts for a long time, the air will have gotten even colder, making the door harder to open than if we had only waited a short period of time. Thus, the door only gets harder and harder to open no matter how long you wait - until it eventually stabilizes at the coldest temperature, and lowest possible pressure and hardest to open.
- Every step 1 follows some past step 5, so, according to the pressure theory, the first time you open a door should always be the hardest.

But... it seems that the door is harder to open the second time, not the first time.

What am I missing here?

The research sounds like a great leap forward! (sorry for the connotations).

But mostly I just like the name "Hospital of Sick Children". Blunt, but honest. The way it should be.

And don't get me started on irrational fear I'm scared shitless of snails. I'm glad I don't have to travel anywhere. Sadly, I know bureaucracy too well, so I know all these stupid, stupid, stupid restrictions are never ever gonna go away. And eventually someone is gonna bomb the TGV or just a regular ol' train and lo! we'll have to jump through the same stupid, stupid, stupid hoops to board trains.

One'd think they wanted to reïntroduce fiefdom and adscription! Soon we can't go anywhere without the consent of our local liege!

ARRGLE! RARRGLE! BLARRGLE! Well, Jeff said he wanted to get to know us better.

And eventually someone is gonna bomb the TGV or just a regular ol' train and lo! we'll have to jump through the same stupid, stupid, stupid hoops to board trains. - Sili

The government has already suggested that in the UK - for main stations only. British terrorists, of course, would never be so unsporting as to board anywhere else.

But... it seems that the door is harder to open the second time, not the first time.

What am I missing here?

Clearly, you are tired from having opened the door the first time :P

That or the atmospheric pressure/vapor pressures/temperatures changed? Maybe the door was closed last time on a dry, cool day with high pressure, and you opened it on a hot muggy day with low pressure (rain moving in!). The hotter air would have lower density to start with, and allow for more contraction with dropping temperature, the higher vapour pressure would allow condensation to occur, further increasing the pressure differential?

I'm still going to stick with being tired from yanking it open the first time...

"I'm also a pretty proud Canadian girl."
Pretty proud. Yup, you're one of us.

I guess since we're all coming out as canucks, I guess it's my turn to say "Edmonton, baby! South-siyed, representin'!"

The seals on the refrigerator doors are not perfect. Given time, the pressure will equalize. For a short time, the pressure differental, which is small, does exist, and the size of the door magnifies the effect.

Yeah, an imperfect seal also makes sense :)

So, back to the burning question, when/where for an Ottawa area Pharyngufest?

For everyone inquiring about when and where the Ottawa Pharyngufest will happen and how we're going to plan this... it looks like we will have a post a bit later today to help us organize this. Must go dissect my mouse brains now! But we will figure this out just a bit later.

@clinteas #73

Yes, yes. I know you all want me to go read a book on genetics. Just to put your mind at ease I have read two. Is that enough?

"Go read a book" ... so lame

Welcome, LisaJ, another PZMinion. (I am beginning to think PZMinion is a real person's name.)

One of the big health care issues in Minnesota is the cost of pharmaceuticals here versus Canada. Many Minnesotans make the trip to Canada to buy cheaper drugs but our government doesn't want us to do this. The US gov't claims your drugs may not be as safe when we all know it's all about the DOLLARS!

My sister who teaches physical education and I agree that Americans don't do a good job of taking care of their health in that we overeat, underexercise, often smoke or drink also, and then, we want a magic pill to lose the weight or cure the ills induced by our slovenly behavior!

That said: our medical costs are unreasonably high. Too much money involved in a "for-profit" society. Free enterprise isn't free for the customers.

Welcome, LisaJ, another PZMinion. (I am beginning to think PZMinion is a real person's name.)

One of the big health care issues in Minnesota is the cost of pharmaceuticals here versus Canada. Many Minnesotans make the trip to Canada to buy cheaper drugs but our government doesn't want us to do this. The US gov't claims your drugs may not be as safe when we all know it's all about the DOLLARS!

My sister who teaches physical education and I agree that Americans don't do a good job of taking care of their health in that we overeat, underexercise, often smoke or drink also, and then, we want a magic pill to lose the weight or cure the ills induced by our slovenly behavior!

That said: our medical costs are unreasonably high. Too much money involved in a "for-profit" society. Free enterprise isn't free for the customers.

Hi LisaJ, good to see you on as a guestblogger! Thanks for the great post.

As someone who has had recent experience with both the US and Canadian health care systems, I feel compelled to add my two cents worth.

On a recent trip to the US, my girlfriend (a US citizen) sprained her ankle badly, and decided to go to the hospital emergency department to get it checked out. They X-rayed it to see if anything was broken (nothing was), and sent her home with a pair of crutches and instructions to keep her weight off the ankle for a few days.

Last night, I was out for a mountain bike ride in Nose hill park here in Calgary, hit a hole hidden in the long grass and flew over the handlebars, landing on my head. (My helmet cracked, but saved me from a much more serious injury, I'm sure.) On the ride back to the parking lot, my neck started to stiffen up a lot, so I decided it would be best to go to the hospital to get checked out. There were a lot of people waiting in the emergency department, so I was a bit worried that I'd have to wait hours to be seen, but as soon as I told the triage nurse what happened, she put a collar on my neck, put me in a wheelchair, and sent me to the trauma bay where they hooked me up to the multi-monitor (heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, etc.). I did have to wait a bit, as the guy next to me had a broken pelvis and collapsed lung, but that's understandable. After examining the X-rays and determining nothing was broken, they let me go home (a couple of hours after I arrived).

Similarities: we both received about the same standard of care (very good, I think). Wait times were about the same, though if my girlfriend showed up at a busy city emergency department with a bashed-up ankle, she might have had to wait longer than she did at the smaller hospital she went to.

Differences: I did not have to consider the cost of treatment at all. It's fully covered by the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan. My girlfriend, on the other hand, had to consider whether it was worth the few hundred dollars it would likely cost her (above what her insurance company would pay), or if she should just tough it out and hope nothing was broken.

Another anecdote: my mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She was scheduled for surgery within days, and is now cancer-free (yay for modern medicine!). Because she's Canadian, she didn't have to consider how to pay for it, or how much the insurance company would pay - again, completely covered by the Provincial health care plan.

-mark.

Ohh, PZMinion, please forgive my double post. I guess it's better than double vision.

I detest the guy, though I can't remember why

Because you crave power over other people, perhaps?

-jcr

you really don't give a flying fuck about relevance, or the facts, do you?

That's kind of rich coming from you. Project much?

-jcr

JCR@175,
You should learn to read: Don't Panic remembered why - it's because you're an idiot, as your latest comment proves once again. Only an idiot thinks that anyone who disagrees with him could only do so because they crave power over other people.

Even though I am not a Canadian, I like singing "Oh, Canada." A few years ago I found out I have lots of cousins in Alberta. Perhaps I should immigrate?

...these proteins are just so awesome and multifunctional...

How much poorer my life would have been, had I never heard this phrase. Welcome to Pharyungula; I await your posts with eager anticipation.

Are we sure that jp and Mr. Stimpson aren't the same poster? Just curious.

I'm a grad student at the U of Saskatchewan (in Saskatoon--yes, I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)

So this Canadian decides to get away from it all. He gets on a plane and 24 hours later he's in Alice Springs, Australia. He sitting in a pub when this Aussie comes up and asks, "So, stranger, where're you from?"

"Saskatoon, Saskatchewan."

The Aussie goes back to his table. One of his mates asks, "Where's the stranger from?"

"I dunno, he doesn't speak English."

Qwerty @ #174. You are forgiven.

Randy Stimpson #170:
No, my friend, it is not enough. 2, 20, or 20 million, it doesn't matter how many books you've read. You must also demonstrate that you have understood them. You have not.

Go back and read those two books again. More carefully this time.

We should not lose sight of the fact that "universal" healthcare (ie equal access for all) and "private" healthcare are not necessarily fundamentally opposing visions. The degree of access does not have to correlate in any way with who pays.

We Canadians are far, far too proud of our so-called public universal healthcare. Our unjustifiable hubris has ossified our healthcare system and sapped us of the political will necessary to change it. The system looks good only in comparison to the American system, which is not as much as "system" as a national disgrace. The mixed systems in Europe are universal as well.

And rationing of some sort is a fact of life in healthcare, no matter the system. Resources are finite. Demand is not. In a universal system, care is rationed based on need. In America's man-made disaster of a healthcare system, care is rationed based on ability to pay.

All that said, we must also remember that "healthcare system" and "health care" are not the same.

The very best health care in the world is provided in the United States. For those who can afford it. It is the law of averages that fubars the Americans on all those indexes of public health. (This of course makes the state of the American system doubly disgraceful.)

The fact is that many of the Canadian healthcare professionals who moved to the United States after the completion of their training did so in order to obtain additional training in the US in their chosen fields, training that was not available in Canada, or available but with far fewer opportunities, or available but at lower quality. In the past many of them chose to stay in the US to continue their careers. Lately more and more of them have chosen to come back. Medical professionals from all over the world move the the U.S. for the same reasons. I know this from personal experience. It is the reason I am no longer living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan anymore, but in Houston, and also the reason why I do intend, one day, to return to Canada, barring unforeseen future circumstances.

I don't know if this upper-eschelon quality can be attributed to the private nature of American healthcare or not, as some have argued, or whether or not this quality might be lost if America converted to a universal system with a substantial public financial role. But it is an important consideration to think about.

My mother got diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. Within three weeks, she had been seen by three specialists, been operated on by the second-best mouth surgeon in Canada, and by an experienced plastic surgeon. Cost out of pocket? Zero. She's 80 and not working, and to have faced the loss of her home as well as the loss of her speech and health would have been a cruel burden.

And here's the kicker. Her surgeon (the second-best one) had moved to the U.S. to make more money in his specialty, but came back to Canada for far less money because the U.S. system revolted him.

It's true to say that Canada's health care system has problems; it's also true that we as citizens are far better off than our neighbours down south; and also that we are enormously protective of the system that we have as various American-influenced neoknuckleheads are always trying to dismantle it. It isn't that we don't have the political will to reform our system -- it's that all of our will is spent keeping it from being destroyed!

Only an idiot thinks that anyone who disagrees with him could only do so because they crave power over other people.

Reading comprehension isn't your long suit, is it? I said nothing about the entirety of people who disagree with me, I traded barbs with an individual who chose to toss off an insult.

-jcr

JCR, from my insult you discerned some desire, nay craving, for power over others on my part? Damn, I was right the in the first post: you're an idiot. Crave power over others? Hah, we'll have to add delusions to your list of faults. Oh, wait, I forgot you already believe in Libertopia.

I do think you have some power fetish there JCR. I searched the comments and other than Nick Gott's restatement of your fantasy you seem to be the only person who uses that word. But, damn, you use it a lot.

Posse, you think a posse system for law enforcement would work? Okay, are you 12 or what? Seriously, on other subject you almost seem like an adult. But when talk strays to government, etc and your arguments literally turn juvenile one is left to wonder.

The US had JCR's libertarian paradise, or as close as anyone has ever got, back in the late 1800s.

Nah, not really. The late 1800s was a period of high tariffs (now that the south was unable to resist), and massive payouts of tax money and free land to well-connected industries like the railroads, investment banks, and shipyards. It was a mercantilist paradise, not a capitalist one.

What we did have going for us at that time though, were several things: first, we retired the fiat currency that Lincoln had caused to be issued during the civil war and returned to gold and silver, making it worthwhile to save and build up private capital at the level of individuals and small companies. (JP Morgan and his buddies managed to put a stop to that with the Federal Reserve Act.)

Another was that government had not yet tried to regulate all inventions, or gotten involved in the agricultural control and subsidy game the way it did under FDR, so agricultural productivity rose enough that we didn't have to have 80% of our people employed as subsistence farmers. Between Lincoln and FDR, the supreme court often acted to limit the federal government to the powers given in the constitution.

There were a couple other factors in our favor then, too. Men like Ford, Edison, Deere, and Westinghouse had remarkably little government interference in their business, and they drove down the cost of production for most goods, as well as transportation and manufacturing. We also had several waves of immigration, and new immigrants tend to be very hard-working people, as we can still see today.

-jcr

my insult you discerned some desire, nay craving, for power over others on my part?

No, I inferred that from your advocacy of a massive nanny state, and it's clear that I touched a nerve.

-jcr

Posse, you think a posse system for law enforcement would work?

I propose it as an alternative that might result in fewer incidents like paramilitary drug raids that leave innocent people dead. If you've got a better idea, let's hear it.

Of course, if you prefer to just keep tossing insults back and forth as you started out doing, you're free to do that too. It does however, put you on rather thin ice when you accuse me of being juvenile.

-jcr

Hi LisaJ,

Congratulations on being selected as one of the guest bloggers. I look forward to your posts, especially as I am also an Ottawa resident.

Perhaps ironically, given the predominant discussion in this thread, I am late in getting my congrats in because I was in hospital when you posted. I'm still a couple of pages away from catching up on my Pharyngula reading.

I am also interested in attending a PharynguFest in Ottawa, and would prefer if it is held in mid/late September.

One brief anecdote re. my hospital stay. I was in for tests regarding a heart problem. While doing a treadmill stress test, I had a moderate-to-severe episode of arhythmia (that's what I was in for). As a precaution (I think), they brought in the 'crash cart' and hooked me up to the defibrillator.

There was a lab tech trainee present, who during all this time hung close to me, monitoring my condition, while the rest of the people who suddenly showed up spent most of the time debating over what to do. To try to maintain my composure, I chatted with the trainee. Turns out, this guy was from Iraq. He had emigrated with his family in 2001. He had been an emergency room surgeon in Iraq! Talk about comforting, having him watching me!

Now what is galling about this story is that here we had a surgeon who was training to become a lab tech in Canada. I had heard stories like this from plenty of other immigrants I have encountered, but none so galling as this - a trained doctor reduced to running lab tests.

I really wish I could find that guy and tell him how much I appreciated his attention.

See you all at the PharynguFest!

Hi bPer. Thanks for your post. I'm sorry to hear that you were in the hospital last week. I know, we do have quite a problem here in Canada in allowing foreign trained doctors to work in their field. It's quite sad to see sometimes. They really have alot of roadblocks placed in front of them, and it's hard to know how many of those blocks are appropriate.

For updated news on the Ottawa Pharyngufest, check MAJeff's post called 'Skip church and party'. Jeff started this post as a place for us all to organize our own Pharyngufests, and there's lots of talk of the Ottawa version there. We are planning to meet on September 27th, I believe. Hope to see you there!