quote from Ayn Rand on Creeping Tyranny
Jerry
in the world right now. Do something about it while you can.
--- [ quote ] ---
No tyranny in history has ever been established overnight. The
method of dictators has always been a slow, gradual, well-calculated
series of measures, each one of them seemingly innocent enough, easily
alibied and explained by the ruler as embodying the best intentions in
the world, and not one of them clear, direct and sufficiently flagrant
to make the entire people – every single man on the street – realize
that it affects him personally.
Each measure is passed without great trouble or violent public
opposition because the average man does not see at the time, how it
can possibly affect his own existence ... . Then, one day, he awakens
suddenly to realize all his rights and liberties are gone. He cannot
say exactly how or when it happened. He sees only the cumulative
effect of single measures he did not consider important at the time he
accepted them. He may be horrified and he may want to scream in
protest. But it is too late to protest.
--- [ end quote ] ---
Tim
"Jerry" <story...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:97f5a333-6c11-4dfb...@p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
In the following quote, Ayn Rand describes exactly what is happening
in the world right now. Do something about it while you can.
Where in the world is this happening?
When did it start?
What to do?
Ayn Rand hasn't said anything new, go read Xenophon's _Hiero or Tyrannicus_.
Errol
> No tyranny in history has ever been established overnight. The
> method of dictators has always been a slow, gradual, well-calculated
> series of measures, each one of them seemingly innocent enough, easily
> alibied and explained by the ruler as embodying the best intentions in
> the world, and not one of them clear, direct and sufficiently flagrant
> to make the entire people – every single man on the street – realize
> that it affects him personally.
> Each measure is passed without great trouble or violent public
> opposition because the average man does not see at the time, how it
> can possibly affect his own existence ... . Then, one day, he awakens
> suddenly to realize all his rights and liberties are gone. He cannot
> say exactly how or when it happened. He sees only the cumulative
> effect of single measures he did not consider important at the time he
> accepted them. He may be horrified and he may want to scream in
> protest. But it is too late to protest.
>
Exactly how G Dubbya's patriot act has removed your constitutional
rights and freedoms.
The US Supreme Court asked;-
“Does the Constitution permit Executive officials to detain an
American citizen indefinitely in military custody in the United
States, hold him essentially incommunicado and deny him access to
counsel, with no opportunity to question the factual basis for his
detention before any impartial tribunal...”
Zerkon
> No tyranny in history has ever been established overnight.
Not correct. It take only a few mins. to install a TV or radio.
Jerry
"Judge Napolitano: Why The Patriot Act is Unconstitutional."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNRSs6LsGeI
Day Brown
Machiavelli noted aristocracies always corrupt republics to the point
where the commons no longer has any investment in the system, nothing to
loose, and everything to gain in revolution. So, a demagogue arises from
among them promising to seize the assets of the rich to gratify their
instinct for revenge. He is, of course, a tyrant. And the people will
welcome his tyranny, which will turn a blind eye to the lawyers being
dragged out to be shot since they no longer protected individual rights.
The political parties became, as we see, clubs for rich lawyers. No law
was ever passed which decreased the incomes of lawyers, while many were
that increased them. Which drove up the cost of justice while the
quality declined to the point tyranny or anarchy was the only answer.
Michael Gordge
Oh looook its a Kantian frog too fucking stupid to realize its being
boiled to death.
MG
Tim
"Michael Gordge" <mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:bb86f091-77b4-47c7...@e37g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
MG
-----------------------
Sorry to disappoint you shagger, but there is no tyranny here in Canada. Now
faulty facts fweddy has got his pants all sticky about some dopes in the
States buying Atlas Bugged, my guess is the tyranny will come when those
newly converted randroids attempt a take-over, i.e. when hell freezes over.
Good luck sheep shagger, you and your randroid legions will need a lot of
it.
P.S. How's that definition of adjective working for you? And why do
randroids always place rational in front of self-interest? Is there
irrational self-interest in the randroid lexicon of hackneyed definitions?
Michael Gordge
>..............there is no tyranny here in Canada.
Hahahha your socialist health system is totally fucked and ewe are too
fucking stupid to see how.
"Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee
reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the
system is in "crisis.""
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing
services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says
Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are
proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people
can exercise freedom of choice."
> Now
> faulty facts fweddy has got his pants all sticky about some dopes in the
> States buying Atlas Bugged,
Only those who know how baddly ewe idiots have fucked and are fucking
things up.
> Is there
> irrational self-interest...............................?
Yes of course there is, ewe dumb fuck.
The irrational self interest happens when ewe leftist fuckwits use
government guns to force your values onto those peaceful human beings
who do not choose those values for themselves and ewe use mobocracy as
your disgusting excuse.
MG
Tim
On Jan 9, 1:50 pm, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
>..............there is no tyranny here in Canada.
Hahahha your socialist health system is totally fucked and ewe are too
fucking stupid to see how.
-------------------------
Works fine for me, it is working well also for a close friend of mine with
brain cancer. She be dead now if she lived in the U.S. and didn't have
health insurance. Too bad you don't have a clue.
But what of yours, you claiming its not socialist?
http://www.emigratenz.org/healthcare-migrants-newzealand.html
So does your wife use it? Do you call her a Kantian commie cunt when she
does? I bet you would rather see her die than use such a system, eh shagger.
================
> Is there
> irrational self-interest...............................?
Yes of course there is, ewe dumb fuck.
The irrational self interest happens when ewe leftist fuckwits use
government guns to force your values onto those peaceful human beings
who do not choose those values for themselves and ewe use mobocracy as
your disgusting excuse.
-------------------------
Really, what happened to your mantra about preceding words with adjectives,
dumb cunt.
Jerry
> "Michael Gordge" <mikegor...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
>
> news:bb86f091-77b4-47c7...@e37g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 7, 5:04 am, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Where in the world is this happening?
>
> Oh looook its a Kantian frog too fucking stupid to realize its being
> boiled to death.
>
> MG
>
> -----------------------
>
> Sorry to disappoint you shagger, but there is no tyranny here in Canada.
1. There is tyranny in Canada but you don't recognize it. Perhaps it's
not as dramatic as in USA and Britain.
2. Canada does not have a fence around it isolating it from the rest
of the world.
Tim
On Jan 8, 9:50 pm, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
> "Michael Gordge" <mikegor...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
>
> news:bb86f091-77b4-47c7...@e37g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 7, 5:04 am, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Where in the world is this happening?
>
> Oh looook its a Kantian frog too fucking stupid to realize its being
> boiled to death.
>
> MG
>
> -----------------------
>
> Sorry to disappoint you shagger, but there is no tyranny here in Canada.
1. There is tyranny in Canada but you don't recognize it. Perhaps it's
not as dramatic as in USA and Britain.
----------------------------
No, there is no tyranny in Canada. Do you even know what the word means
Jerry?
----------------------------
2. Canada does not have a fence around it isolating it from the rest
of the world.
------------------------------
So, that makes it a tyranny?
Really Jerry, do try to engage your brain before you start typing.
Jerry
> > Sorry to disappoint you shagger, but there is no tyranny here in Canada.
>
> 1. There is tyranny in Canada but you don't recognize it. Perhaps it's
> not as dramatic as in USA and Britain.
>
> ----------------------------
> No, there is no tyranny in Canada. Do you even know what the word means
> Jerry?
> ----------------------------
Tyranny is a matter of degree. There is a worldwide movement toward
totalitarianism. Canada is not exempt.
> 2. Canada does not have a fence around it isolating it from the rest
> of the world.
>
> ------------------------------
> So, that makes it a tyranny?
>
> Really Jerry, do try to engage your brain before you start typing.
My point was that Canada will not be unaffected by tyranny around it.
Michael Gordge
>
> Works fine for me,
Parasites have never complained about being a parasite, so of course
they will laud parasitism.
Why is the Canadian health system about to face a major change,
towards private health care, if it is so fucking good?
> it is working well also for a close friend of mine with
> brain cancer.
Ewe have a close friend, hahahha, no wonder she has brain cancer, she
got it when ewe told her you were her friend, eh?
> So does your wife use it?
The state steals from our pay packet to pay for your leftist
parasitical ilk's fucking health care and I have private health
insurance to pay for mine and my family's health care, where we get
far better service and at a fraction of the cost, notwithstanding the
fact I am being forced to pay for your ilk's as well, ewe fucking pig
ignorant parasitical masochistical sadistical commie cunt.
> Really, what happened to your mantra about preceding words with adjectives,
Nothing, ewe remain a pig ignorant fucking useless irrational little
Kantian commie shit.
MG
Tim
Parasites have never complained about being a parasite, so of course
they will laud parasitism.
Why is the Canadian health system about to face a major change,
towards private health care, if it is so fucking good?
---------------
What change is that? Time for another reality check for the shagger?
----------------
> it is working well also for a close friend of mine with
> brain cancer.
Ewe have a close friend, hahahha, no wonder she has brain cancer, she
got it when ewe told her you were her friend, eh?
------------------
Ahh, randroid humour, typically pathetic.
-----------------
> So does your wife use it?
The state steals from our pay packet to pay for your leftist
parasitical ilk's fucking health care and I have private health
insurance to pay for mine and my family's health care, where we get
far better service and at a fraction of the cost, notwithstanding the
fact I am being forced to pay for your ilk's as well, ewe fucking pig
ignorant parasitical masochistical sadistical commie cunt.
---------------------
Sorry fantasy boy but sheep fuckers on some backwards island in butt fuck
nowhere don't have anything to do with what goes on in Canada.
> Really, what happened to your mantra about preceding words with
> adjectives,
Nothing, ewe remain a pig ignorant fucking useless irrational little
Kantian commie shit.
MG
----------------
So as a randoid you are obviously all for irrational self-interest, typical
randroid stupidity.
Tim
On Jan 9, 9:19 am, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
> > Sorry to disappoint you shagger, but there is no tyranny here in Canada.
>
> 1. There is tyranny in Canada but you don't recognize it. Perhaps it's
> not as dramatic as in USA and Britain.
>
> ----------------------------
> No, there is no tyranny in Canada. Do you even know what the word means
> Jerry?
> ----------------------------
Tyranny is a matter of degree. There is a worldwide movement toward
totalitarianism. Canada is not exempt.
---------
Oh so now it's totalitarian too. What's wrong Jerry, don't you want to face
the fact that you use words that you clearly don't understand?
> 2. Canada does not have a fence around it isolating it from the rest
> of the world.
>
> ------------------------------
> So, that makes it a tyranny?
>
> Really Jerry, do try to engage your brain before you start typing.
My point was that Canada will not be unaffected by tyranny around it.
-----------------
My point is that you've offered zero evidence to back your vacuous claims.
You should avoid that randroid drivel you quote; it'll rot your brain.
Jerry
> My point is that you've offered zero evidence to back your vacuous claims.
The original topic was creeping tyranny. You switched it to Canada. I
was not originally talking about Canada. If you want to say there is
no tyranny in Canada, fine. I was originally talking about the world.
There is creeping tyranny in the world, ultimately leading to world
totalitarianism if it is not stopped. If you want evidence, go to APO
and do some homework. I posted a whole bunch of evidence on APO. But
you will not accept evidence. You don't want to learn. You want to
argue just to argue. I did my homework; I'm not going to do your
homework for you.
I posted that quote from Ayn Rand because it accurately describes what
is happening in the world right now. Obviously you can't understand
that it is an accurate description of what is happening if you don't
know what is happening. If you don't know what is happening, you have
no one to blame but yourself; information is there.
The world is not totalitarian yet. But it is moving in that direction.
Canada has the usual mixed system, part capitalism, part socialism.
There is nothing special about Canada or any other country that will
make it safe from the totalitarian movement unless some resistance is
organized.
In Canada where I live, doctors are required to be licensed by
government and they are restricted by law in how they can help
patients. For example in my case, everything they are permitted by law
to do would harm me. So I am my own doctor. I can help myself in a way
that if a doctor did that to me, the doctor would lose his license.
Go do some homework. Don't expect me to do it for you.
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.philosophy.objectivism/topics?hl=en&gvc=2
Michael Gordge
> So I am my own doctor. I can help myself in a way
> that if a doctor did that to me, the doctor would lose his license.
Isn't that just bizarre?
Little do these leftist cockheads like Timmm realize that minimum
standards, say of health care, as set by the state become by default
the maximum standards accepted by society.
Why be better, what incentives are there to be better than standards
set by the state?
And little do these leftist retarded cockheads like Time realize that
anything compulsory by default becomes expensive.
The dopey knuckle-dragger Timmm, has yet to explain how the state
stealing a $1.00 in health tax, to then give back less than $0.30c in
health service, is a good idea.
The leftist retards do not like talking about the "deadweight loss" of
tax.
Its about at this point that Timmm will get all excited and prefer to
talk about having sex with sheep than the stupidty of his anti-human
leftist ideology.
MG
Tim
MG
------------------------------------------------
Listen to the rightard randroid quack out his endless litany about how the
left has ruined everything, what a stupid sheep fucker.
Tim
On Jan 9, 9:41 pm, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
> My point is that you've offered zero evidence to back your vacuous claims.
The original topic was creeping tyranny. You switched it to Canada.
--------------------------
Idiot.
--------------------------
I
was not originally talking about Canada. If you want to say there is
no tyranny in Canada, fine.
----------------
One post ago you claimed the opposite, are you stupid?
----------------
I was originally talking about the world.
There is creeping tyranny in the world, ultimately leading to world
totalitarianism if it is not stopped. If you want evidence, go to APO
and do some homework. I posted a whole bunch of evidence on APO. But
you will not accept evidence.
-----------------
WTF? I asked you to provide evidence, idiot.
------------------
You don't want to learn. You want to
argue just to argue. I did my homework; I'm not going to do your
homework for you.
------------------
Fuck off, idiot
<repeated randroid BS removed>
Michael Gordge
> Listen to the rightard randroid quack out his endless litany about how the
> left has ruined everything,.............
Both the left and the right, yes thats right, they have fucked pretty
much everything. And ewe are about to learn through that disgusting
health scam ewe retards have in Canada, how the state stealing a
dollar from ewe to give ewe back $0.30c in service is as stupid as it
gets.
MG
Tim
--------------------------------
About to learn, eh shagger. Give me the time frame, shagger, or is this
simply another example of randroid wishful thinking mixed with the idiotic
randroid notion that if a randroid quacks then it must be true? You sure
talk a lot of shit, like most randroids.
Michael Gordge
> Give me the time frame,
Ewe really are as thick as pig shit aren't ewe? Do your own fucking
research if ewe dare, ewe lazy leftist retard.
MG
Tim
--------------------------------
Quack, quack said the dodgy randroid cunt. Your white flag is noted. At this
time, if the tables were turned, you would engage in a long, boring,
nauseating rightard whine about the onus being on the person making the
assertion. So you do the fucking homework you braindead randroid cunt or
simply admit that your fucking thick skull is permanently lodged up your fat
randroid ass.
Michael Gordge
>
> Fuck off, idiot
So how's your good friend's cancer spreading, is she dead yet?
MG
Tim
So how's your good friend's cancer spreading, is she dead yet?
-----------------------------------
Not yet. How about your wife, she till kicking or has she kicked the bucket?
She might have has a happy life if you hadn't sprayed her with DDT and if
she had married a real man.
Michael Gordge
> Quack,
Is she dead yet? lots of pain? Hair fallen out?
MG
Michael Gordge
Tim
> So as..........
MG
----------------------------
She's your wife; you tell me. What I can infer is that your wife had or has
a lot of weight to lose, a typical trait in rightard pigs -- see Dick Cheney
for a prime example. If she's kicked the bucket, then she's arguably losing
weight pretty quick. If she's still alive, then her weight depends on her
diet and physical condition and physical activity. If she only eats apples
grown by you, then she's losing weight quickly, for, of your own admission,
gordgean apples tend to rot. If she has a typical rightard diet and exercise
regimen, then she's likely getting fatter by the day and probably can't get
out of the house because her fat ass won't fit through the door. You let me
know.
Tim
> Quack,
MG
---------------------------
She's your wife, you tell me.
Michael Gordge
Canada Resorts to Lotteries to Ration Socialized Healthcare
Vermin-beset Britain isn't the only country to warn us away from the
looming disaster of nationalized healthcare. There's also our neighbor
to the north:
In the latest jarring illustration of the country's doctor shortage, a
family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine
which patients would be ejected f More..rom his overloaded practice.
Dr. Ken Runciman says he reluctantly eliminated about 100 patients in
two separate draws to avoid having to provide assembly-line service or
extend already onerous work hours, and admits the move has divided the
close-knit community of Powassan.
Yet it was not the first time such methods have been employed to
determine medical service. A new family practice in Newfoundland held
a lottery last month to pick its caseload from among thousands of
applicants. An Edmonton doctor selected names randomly earlier this
year to pare 500 people from his heavy caseload. And in Ontario,
regulators have heard reports of a number of other physicians also
using draws to choose, or remove, patients.
Socialism creates poverty not only by destroying incentives, but by
interfering with the laws of supply and demand. Attempts to mandate
"free" healthcare have created infinite demand. At the same time,
government interference has made the medical profession much less
appealing, drying up the supply of doctors.
Our own corrupted legal system, which allows ambulance-chasing bandits
like John Edwards to loot doctors for outrageous fortunes, thereby
driving malpractice insurance costs through the stratosphere, has had
a similar effect. In the end, we'll be forced to chose between doctors
and economic freedom on one side, or bureaucrats, lawyers, and
moonbattery on the other.
But wait there's more.
The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
David Gratzer
Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation.
Small wonder Canadians are looking to the market.
Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her
Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux�a proven cancer
drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional
chemotherapies that More..more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in
the body�and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if
Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin�s insurance didn�t: she received one
inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for
reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed
care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again.
Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies�in the
United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.
When Aucoin appealed to an official ombudsman, the Ontario government
claimed that her treatment was unproven and that she had gone to an
unaccredited clinic. But the FDA in the U.S. had approved Erbitux, and
her clinic was a cancer center affiliated with a prominent Catholic
hospital in Buffalo. This January, the ombudsman ruled in Aucoin�s
favor, awarding her the cost of treatment. She represents a dramatic
new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you
need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and
often suing) to get them to pick up the tab.
But if Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they
need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a
viable health-care model. There�s no question that American health
care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess.
Over the last five years, health-insurance premiums have more than
doubled, leaving firms like General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy.
Expensive health care has also hit workers in the pocketbook: it�s one
of the reasons that median family income fell between 2000 and 2005
(despite a rise in overall labor costs). Health spending has surged
past 16 percent of GDP. The number of uninsured Americans has risen,
and even the insured seem dissatisfied. So it�s not surprising that
some Americans think that solving the nation�s health-care woes may
require adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the
government finances and provides the care. Canadians, the seductive
single-payer tune goes, not only spend less on health care; their
health outcomes are better, too�life expectancy is longer, infant
mortality lower.
Thus, Paul Krugman in the New York Times: �Does this mean that the
American way is wrong, and that we should switch to a Canadian-style
single-payer system? Well, yes.� Politicians like Hillary Clinton are
on board; Michael Moore�s new documentary Sicko celebrates the virtues
of Canada�s socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health
Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a
scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee;
and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health
insurance. Some are tempted. Not me.
I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don�t want to
overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn�t spend much time
contemplating the nuances of health economics. I wanted to get into
medical school�my mind brimmed with statistics on MCAT scores and
admissions rates, not health spending. But as a Canadian, I had soaked
up three things from my environment: a love of ice hockey; an ability
to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit in my head; and the belief that
government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about
American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of
uninsured people. When HillaryCare shook Washington, I remember
thinking that the Clintonistas were right.
My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way
to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the
hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.
Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed
with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it
turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine.
Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew
about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went
well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any
diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain
from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic�with a three-
year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what
seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with
breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy,
when the standard of care was four weeks.
I decided to write about what I saw. By day, I attended classes and
visited patients; at night, I worked on a book. Unfortunately,
statistics on Canadian health care�s weaknesses were hard to come by,
and even finding people willing to criticize the system was difficult,
such was the emotional support that it then enjoyed. One family
friend, diagnosed with cancer, was told to wait for potentially
lifesaving chemotherapy. I called to see if I could write about his
plight. Worried about repercussions, he asked me to change his name. A
bit later, he asked if I could change his sex in the story, and maybe
his town. Finally, he asked if I could change the illness, too.
My book�s thesis was simple: to contain rising costs, government-run
health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus,
at a time when Canada�s population was aging and needed more care, not
less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical
school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees,
resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed
treatment�patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the
delays. The only solution, I concluded, was to move away from
government command-and-control structures and toward a more market-
oriented system. To capture Canadian health care�s growing crisis, I
called my book Code Blue, the term used when a patient�s heart stops
and hospital staff must leap into action to save him. Though I had a
hard time finding a Canadian publisher, the book eventually came out
in 1999 from a small imprint; it struck a nerve, going through five
printings.
Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada�they characterized
all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British
controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with
a specialist, only to have it canceled�48 times. More than 1 million
Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for
longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in
Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for
the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed
that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France,
the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat
wave�when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched
beyond capacity�15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-
the-art drugs aren�t available. And so on.
But single-payer systems�confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting
lists, and substandard treatment�are starting to crack. Today my book
wouldn�t seem so provocative to Canadians, whose views on public
health care are much less rosy than they were even a few years ago.
Canadian newspapers are now filled with stories of people frustrated
by long delays for care:
vow broken on cancer wait times: most hospitals across canada fail to
meet ottawa�s four-week guideline for radiation
patients wait as p.e.t. scans used in animal experiments
back patients waiting years for treatment: study
the doctor is . . . out
As if a taboo had lifted, government statistics on the health-care
system�s problems are suddenly available. In fact, government
researchers have provided the best data on the doctor shortage,
noting, for example, that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12
percent of that province�s population) can�t find family physicians.
Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a
lottery to determine who�d get a doctor�s appointment.
Dr. Jacques Chaoulli is at the center of this changing health-care
scene. Standing at about five and a half feet and soft-spoken, he
doesn�t seem imposing. But this accidental revolutionary has turned
Canadian health care on its head. In the 1990s, recognizing the
growing crisis of socialized care, Chaoulli organized a private Quebec
practice�patients called him, he made house calls, and then he
directly billed his patients. The local health board cried foul and
began fining him. The legal status of private practice in Canada
remained murky, but billing patients, rather than the government, was
certainly illegal, and so was private insurance.
Chaoulli gave up his private practice but not the fight for private
medicine. Trying to draw attention to Canada�s need for an alternative
to government care, he began a hunger strike but quit after a month,
famished but not famous. He wrote a couple of books on the topic,
which sold dismally. He then came up with the idea of challenging the
government in court. Because the lawyers whom he consulted dismissed
the idea, he decided to make the legal case himself and enrolled in
law school. He flunked out after a term. Undeterred, he found a
sponsor for his legal fight (his father-in-law, who lives in Japan)
and a patient to represent. Chaoulli went to court and lost. He
appealed and lost again. He appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
And there�amazingly�he won.
Chaoulli was representing George Zeliotis, an elderly Montrealer
forced to wait almost a year for a hip replacement. Zeliotis was in
agony and taking high doses of opiates. Chaoulli maintained that the
patient should have the right to pay for private health insurance and
get treatment sooner. He based his argument on the Canadian equivalent
of the Bill of Rights, as well as on the equivalent Quebec charter.
The court hedged on the national question, but a majority agreed that
Quebec�s charter did implicitly recognize such a right.
It�s hard to overstate the shock of the ruling. It caught the
government completely off guard�officials had considered Chaoulli�s
case so weak that they hadn�t bothered to prepare briefing notes for
the prime minister in the event of his victory. The ruling wasn�t just
shocking, moreover; it was potentially monumental, opening the way to
more private medicine in Quebec. Though the prohibition against
private insurance holds in the rest of the country for now, at least
two people outside Quebec, armed with Chaoulli�s case as precedent,
are taking their demand for private insurance to court.
Rick Baker helps people, and sometimes even saves lives. He describes
a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy.
Dissatisfied with the opinion�he had no family history of epilepsy,
but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren�t usually
seen in the disorder�the man requested an MRI. The government told him
that the wait would be four and a half months. So he went to Baker,
who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours�and who, after the
test discovered a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks.
Baker isn�t a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He�s a medical broker,
one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the
inadequacies of Canada�s government care. Canadians pay him to set up
surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and specialist consultations,
privately and quickly. �I don�t have a medical background. I just have
some common sense,� he explains. �I don�t need to be a doctor for what
I do. I�m just expediting care.�
He tells me stories of other people whom his British Columbia�based
company, Timely Medical Alternatives, has helped�people like the
elderly woman who needed vascular surgery for a major artery in her
abdomen and was promised prompt care by one of the most senior
bureaucrats in the government, who never called back. �Her doctor told
her she�s going to die,� Baker remembers. So Timely got her surgery in
a couple of days, in Washington State. Then there was the eight-year-
old badly in need of a procedure to help correct her deafness. After
watching her surgery get bumped three times, her parents called
Timely. She�s now back at school, her hearing partly restored. �The
father said, �Mr. Baker, my wife and I are in agreement that your star
shines the brightest in our heaven,� � Baker recalls. �I told that
story to a government official. He shrugged. He couldn�t fucking care
less.�
Not everyone has kind words for Baker. A woman from a union-sponsored
health coalition, writing in a local paper, denounced him for
�profiting from people�s misery.� When I bring up the comment, he
snaps: �I�m profiting from relieving misery.� Some of the services
that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but
governments are loath to stop him. �What I am doing could be construed
as civil disobedience,� he says. �There comes a time when people need
to lead the government.�
Baker isn�t alone: other private-sector health options are blossoming
across Canada, and the government is increasingly turning a blind eye
to them, too, despite their often uncertain legal status. Private
clinics are opening at a rate of about one a week. Companies like
MedCan now offer �corporate medicals� that include an array of
diagnostic tests and a referral to Johns Hopkins, if necessary.
Insurance firms sell critical-illness insurance, giving policyholders
a lump-sum payment in the event of a major diagnosis; since such
policyholders could, in theory, spend the money on anything they
wanted, medical or not, the system doesn�t count as health insurance
and is therefore legal. Testifying to the changing nature of Canadian
health care, Baker observes that securing prompt care used to mean a
trip south. These days, he says, he�s able to get 80 percent of his
clients care in Canada, via the private sector.
Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the
health-care system�s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August,
they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former
socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has
nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public
health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy
for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him
down. �This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in
under a week,� he fumed to the New York Times, �and in which humans
can wait two to three years.�
And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to
shrink the waiting lists. Day�s clinic, for instance, handles workers�-
compensation cases for employees of both public and private
corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80
percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where
fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government
recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital�s emergency
room.
This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain�s government-
run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party�which
originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at
the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as
�Americanization��now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells,
a senior British health official, recently said: �The big trouble with
a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and
inward-looking culture.� Last year, the private sector provided about
5 percent of Britain�s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple
that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to
voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four
providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government
will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American
firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.
Sweden�s government, after the completion of the latest round of
privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm�s
primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including
one of the city�s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism,
Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-
payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in
Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and
turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade,
only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control).
It�s important to note that change in these countries is slow and
gradual�market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States
was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health
care as essential, it is so no longer.
Yet even as Stockholm and Saskatoon are percolating with the ideas of
Adam Smith, a growing number of prominent Americans are arguing that
socialized health care still provides better results for less money.
�Americans tend to believe that we have the best health care system in
the world,� writes Krugman in the New York Times. �But it isn�t true.
We spend far more per person on health care . . . yet rank near the
bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy
to infant mortality.�
One often hears variations on Krugman�s argument�that America lags
behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes
reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use, and
cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care
is just one factor in health. Americans live 75.3 years on average,
fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of
any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life
expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall,
or a car accident. Such factors aren�t academic�homicide rates in the
United States are much higher than in other countries (eight times
higher than in France, for instance). In The Business of Health,
Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and
unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that
Americans who don�t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in
any other Western country.
And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick
citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates
bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50
percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma:
12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival
rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in
France and down to 44.3 percent in England�a striking variation.
Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that
the costs are just too high: �In 2002 . . . the United States spent
$5,267 on health care for each man, woman, and child.� Health-care
spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of that.
Again, the picture isn�t quite as clear as he suggests; because the
U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn�t unreasonable
for it to spend more on health care. Take America�s high spending on
research and development. M. D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer
center, spends more on research than Canada does.
That said, American health care is expensive. And Americans aren�t
always getting a good deal. In the coming years, with health expenses
spiraling up, it will be easy for some�like the zealous legislators in
California�to give in to the temptation of socialized medicine. In
Washington, there are plenty of old pieces of legislation that like-
minded politicians could take off the shelf, dust off, and promote:
expanding Medicare to Americans 55 and older, say, or covering all
children in Medicaid.
But such initiatives would push the United States further down the
path to a government-run system and make things much, much worse.
True, government bureaucrats would be able to cut costs�but only by
shrinking access to health care, as in Canada, and engendering a
Canadian-style nightmare of overflowing emergency rooms and yearlong
waits for treatment. America is right to seek a model for delivering
good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to
Canada, but close to home�in the other four-fifths or so of our
economy. From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market
competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up.
Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.
Tim
On Jan 10, 7:48 pm, "Tim" <t...@arc.com> wrote:
Canada Resorts to Lotteries to Ration Socialized Healthcare
-----------------------------
Haaa haaaaaaaaaaaaa ha. You randroids are a laugh a minute.
Zerkon
> Ayn Rand describes exactly what is happening in the world right now.
"Many married women are obsessed by their lovers and get very angry when
they get dumped by them. Yes, I am an objectivist, he was my object and
so keep your hands off or your Atlas will do more than just shrug!"