March 3, 2010

This is the best ...

... the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel can do for conservative commentary, observes a perceptive reader of the local paper.

Apparently so.

You can't get heart surgery in Canada, according to award-winning journalist Patrick McIlheran, that being assumedly a glib allusion to Danny Williams, the Newfoundland politician who on the advice of an old college chum* decided to fly to Miami for a cardiac procedure he could have had done in Montreal or Toronto.

What McIlheran doesn't tell you — and likely isn't even aware of, as it's not information that appeared on the Wall Street Journal editorial pages — is that Mr. Williams is rather wealthy and has a home in Miami to convalesce at so he could afford to go wherever he wanted.

Which has always been the case. Except most people are not wealthy; for example, those millions of Americans — tens of millions, by some accounts, nearly equal to the entire population of Canada — who can't afford private health insurance at all, something that Canadians don't have to worry about (unless they're traveling to the U.S.).

Not even Newfoundlanders, who are among the poorest folks in the country, need to worry about getting kicked off their private insurance plans because they might have, say, a heart condition.

Once upon a time Patrick McIlheran found himself motoring through Ontario, and award-winningly journalized about being alarmed at confronting highway signage en Français. Nobody having but the slightest familiarity with Canadian history or demographics would be surprised. Only for McIlheran was it particularly noteworthy.

Not that not knowing what the hell he's talking about has ever stopped McIlheran's unrelenting barrage of utter nonsense.

* Reportedly a fellow alumnus of one of those nefarious socialist institutions like the University of Wisconsin.

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