Republican Senator Mitch McConnell recently made a speech to the Senate referring to the "bureaucrats who run Canada's health care system" and using the Kingston General Hospital as an example of the horror of Canada's health care. KGH supposedly had waits of 340 days for knee replacement and 196 days for hip replacement. McConnell also fussed that Ontario's wait time for breast cancer surgery is three months. CNN did interview Dr. David Zelt, KGH's chief of staff, who pointed out the wait times are actually 91 days for hip replacement, 109 days for knees, and that these aren't the average wait times, but the time that nine out of 10 people have had the procedure. Many have them done much faster. For breast cancer surgery, the wait time at KGH is 23 days, across Ontario it's 34 days.
Mitch McConnell also claimed on national television that a friend of a friend of a friend was allowed to die after the Canadian government refused health care to the man because he was too old.
In Canada, only the young and the healthy are allowed to see doctors.
I hate that we've come to the place as a society where utter bullshit is allowed to go uncontested on major news networks.
ReplyDeleteThis idea that the media isn't supposed to do follow-up or ask questions or make corrections, but instead just act as an unfiltered conduit for anyone with a microphone, is so completely repulsive to me and, I imagine, anyone with half a brain.
And, I assure you, most Canadians certainly do not recognize their health care system in any of the caricatures presented by the political right in this country.
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