To See Ourselves As Others See Us - healthcare

[Derechos]

Rudy Giuliani, 2008:

You have got to see the trap. Otherwise we are in for a disaster. We are in for Canadian health care, French health care, British health care.


David Cameron, now:

Ask a Briton to describe “American-style” healthcare, and you’ll hear a catalog of horrors that include grossly expensive and unnecessary medical procedures and a privatized system that favors the rich. For a people accustomed to free healthcare for all, regardless of income, the fact that millions of their cousins across the Atlantic have no insurance and can’t afford decent treatment is a farce as well as a tragedy.

But critics here warn that a similarly bleak future may await Britain if a government plan to put more power in the hands of doctors and introduce more competition into the NHS succeeds — privatization by stealth, they say.

So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/to-see-ourselves-as-others-see-us/

[murphyj87]

1. A poll a year or so ago showed.....

A poll conducted for the CTV, a privately owned Canadian TV network, and the Globe and Mail, a conservative leaning newspaper, showed that 91% of Canadians believe or know that we Canadians have better health care than Americans have.

The same poll showed that 45% of Americans believed that Canadians have better health care than Americans have, while only 42% wanted to keep insurance companies in charge of their medical decisions.

Any Canadian politician or party that even whispered that they wanted an American style insurance run health care system for Canada would be voted out of office before they blink. Canadians have always legitimately feared American style health care. It is only relatively recently (four years maybe) that partisan and profit driven Americans have lied to Americans and spread paranoia about ours.

http://www.youtube.com/v/9TWuO5dBYjo?fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ez8oQWHK_yI?fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/CST8sRqUOcQ?fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/T6i3RZdu7_k?fs=1


The poll also showed:

When Canadian respondents were asked how to define their political views, regardless of how they actually vote, slightly more than half described themselves as liberal:

Very liberal: 12 per cent
Liberal: 39 per cent
Conservative: 38 per cent
Very conservative: 3 per cent

Respondents in the United States were slanted in the other direction, and also had more people who considered themselves on the extreme right of the political spectrum:

Very conservative: 10 per cent
Conservative: 47 per cent
Liberal: 30 per cent
Very liberal: 7 per cent

So, a direct comparison:

Very Liberal:______Canadians_12%____Americans__7%
Liberal:___________Canadians_39%____Americans_30%
Conservative:______Canadians_38%____Americans_47%
Very Conservative:_Canadians__3%____Americans_10%

The same poll also suggested Canadians are far more liberal than Americans, with 70 per cent of Canadians supporting gay marriage.

Canada has had marriage equality nationwide since 2005 and LGBT have served openly in the Canadian military since 1992. In what century is the US anyway?