My Political Rant

I would like to start this rant by saying that Michael Moore is a moron. His new film "Sicko" does a great job of showing how wonderful the Canadian and Cuban health care systems are. They get free health care and everybody in those countries just absolutely love it. Everyone has health care and everybody is jolly happy. The United States is somewhat like the devil since it does not provide health care for everybody in the nation. In my own personal opinion doctors should be in no way expected to work for free or so cheap that it becomes basically free. There are a lot of people out there who can't afford food, so should restaurants be obligated to give them free food? They have it available, so why not? And since there are millions who are homeless should hotels be required to give them a place to stay? They have available rooms, you know. Because doctors have the ability to treat people, should they just do it for free? I think absolutely not. But back onto why Michael Moore is a moron.

He so conveniently forgets to add in the fact that there are many, many people who are absolutely NOT satisfied with their health care. He fails to mention the fact that if you require a surgery that is not life-threatening, there is a waiting list that could take months. That would mean that when I needed my shoulder surgery I would've had to wait for months and months to get it fixed. Sure, I wasn't going to die, but it definitely got old when my shoulder kept going in out and out of socket.

Then there's the whole "free" aspect of it all. It's not free. Who is he kidding? Forty percent of every tax dollar goes towards health care in Canada, which I'm guessing would raise our taxes if we did it here. But then of course there are those who don't make enough to pay taxes and so they still wouldn't be paying for anything so it would be somewhat like Medicaid for most people...except that our taxes would be raised and in return the quality of our health care would go down.

The whole cheap meds issue: The Canadian gov't put a cap on how much drug companies can charge for their drugs. Sounds like a good idea? Well, for them it sure is. However, these drug companies have already spent the billions of dollars on research and creating the drug. They are not just going to eat that money. They are still able to make a little bit of money on these drugs in Canada, so they still sell it there. They just make Americans help pay for the research by charging more for the drugs here. So while it's awesome for Canadians to have cheaper medications, Americans are footing the bill for them.

And last but not least, there are more and more Canadians every year that are buying private insurance instead of using the gov't health care. So in a few more years the rich will have the private insurance while the poor will have the gov't health care. Doesn't that resemble what we have here already?

I have no problem with my health care. Adam has a great job so we have good health coverage, however I know that there are a lot of people who are suffering from constant higher premiums while their benefits are cut. So for that, I know that something needs to be done with health care here, but I just don't think the answer is what Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton think. It sounds like a good idea in theory, especially when you leave out the important parts that I just mentioned, but I just don't think that having the government controlling health care is a good idea. The precious democrats have been in control for 6 months and what have they accomplished? Can you imagine if they were in control of your health care?

*Disclaimer--this post was in no way to make Canada seem bad. I have no problem with Canada or Canadians. I just don't want their health care system.