McIlheran: Inadvertent genius of irony

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran occasionally enjoys raving about Canada's health care system. He does this by finding a troubling anecdote here or there and then attempting to squeeze it somehow into his preexisting conclusions.

He endeavors to warn his likeminded disciples of the Canuckian horrors that await under the impending Obamarxist dystopia.

It seems McIlheran recently found such an anecdote, concerning a 77-year-old man who visited a walk-in clinic in a Montreal suburb and, unfortunately, died of a heart attack during his 20-minute wait.

The attending physician, Dr. Jacques Chaouilli, was in a Canadian court the other day responding to inquiries as to why he didn't try and resuscitate the decedent.

"I concluded that this patient must have been dead already a long enough time — I had no way of knowing how long — but long enough," Dr. Chaoilli told a reporter, adding that he thought it was "the scene of a crime," hence his hesitation at moving the corpse.

Dr. Chaouilli gained some notoriety a couple of years ago when he successfully challenged the Province of Quebec's restrictions on privately insured health care. He's one of those brave mavericks who opt out of the "socialized medicine" that McIlheran so detests.

That's right: McIlheran has selected the alleged negligence of a physician that derives his livelihood from U.S.-style private insurance plans as an example of how bad a public health care system is.

Outstanding work, Mr. McIlheran. Way to pick those cherries.

(Canada, incidentally, ranks 14th in the world by overall life expectancy, according to the current CIA Factbook. The U.S. is 45th.)