… is the man convicted of murdering his parents pleading for mercy because he is an orphan.
Michael Stickings comes in a close second.
via Ed Morrissey comes the story of a 14-week premature, 2 lb 4 oz baby that needed a NICU incubator, but whoopsie! the baby was born north of the border and, shucks, don’t you know there wasn’t an empty space in a NICU anywhere in the province to be found? Canada then ships off the baby south to Buffalo, NY, but the parents have to stay behind until they secure passports. The separation is tragic but who does Stickings blame? Why nasty old America!
I won’t get into the relative merits of the American and Canadian health-care systems here. Suffice it to say that there obviously need to be more neo-natal intensive care unit beds up here. Thankfully — and this doesn’t mean that the American system is better (after all, at least the couple and their baby are guaranteed care up here, thanks to our public system, even if it’s not perfect) — there was an opening south of the border.
Stickings evidently didn’t have a grandmother like mine. Among her many hard-headed sayings she liked to quote was “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Canadians have higher incidents of cancer because that national health system rations screening. Canadians have higher death rates from cancer because cancers are treated there with drugs Americans stopped using ten or more years ago.
But the American system is “no better”?
Yeah, right, because what is a few thousand more people dead or suffering per year when measured against the bottom line.
As Ed says
But why wasn’t there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of Canada? The government of Canada won’t pay for more. They don’t exist to expand supply to meet demand; their single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism.
Not quite seven years ago my daughter went into premature labor with the twins at 31 weeks. She spent 3 weeks in the hospital in the intensive care section of the maternity ward, confined to bed on a magnesium drip until the boys were bigger. They were born at 34 weeks (2 lbs 14 oz and 4 lb 4 oz respectively) and then were in the NICU for almost 4 weeks. My daughter had insurance through her employer but she and the boys wouldn’t have received any different care if she hadn’t. Stickings, deliberately or not, tries to conflate America’s healthcare insurance problems with America’s healthcare delivery.
If government ran interference on automobile insurance like they do medical insurance – for instance, requiring oil changes and tuneups be covered with a $10 or $20 co-pay – then auto premiums would easily be three times as expensive as they are now.
Stickings:
This family must be reunited. Now
Fine, send the baby back.
****************
UPDATE No, no, no, Liza Mundy* of WaPo is NOT really saying this…
Poor Jon and Kate. Their marriage is over, their show on hiatus, their domestic ordeal entering a new phase of acrimony. Possibly nothing could have saved this marriage, but one thing would have made it less fragile: a mandate for health insurance to cover in vitro fertilization. [...]And insurance coverage is hardly the big-ticket item you might think [who IS this gal and what color is the sky on her planet? ... ed.]: In Massachusetts, which mandates coverage, a 2002 study argued that the rise in the annual premium is really a matter of just a few dollars. Yet replicating Massachusetts around the country is a tall order because of the persistent public view that infertility is somehow not a legitimate disease, or that infertility patients are to blame for their plight. [Yummy, Liza*! That's a mighty big bowl of straw you're chewing on there! ... ed.] [...]
If sweeping health-care reform includes more substantial IVF coverage, TLC will have fewer candidates for its carnival sideshow offerings, but that’s a loss most of us could live with.
Is Liza pimping Jon and Kate’s divorce as an excuse for nationalized, government rationed healthcare, or is she more annoyed at reality shows? They aren’t my cup of tea either, but I choose to watch other programs.
Oh, btw, “big family” doesn’t automatically translate to “dysfunctional” family. Liza ought to check out that other TLC Big Family offering 18 Kids and Counting.
(h/t Newsbusters)
*corrected – Liza Mundy wrote the original WaPo article and Tim Graham is the writer at Newsbusters (thanks hf)
Comment by B Moe on 6/28 @ 5:11 pm #
Canada won’t issue the father a passport because he is a convicted criminal.
Fucking Bush.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/28 @ 5:15 pm #
Elian they sent back to his dirty socialist homeland at gunpoint.
Comment by SBP on 6/28 @ 5:21 pm #
after all, at least the couple and their baby are guaranteed care up here
This is clearly some novel usage of “guaranteed care” and “up here” with which I am unfamiliar.
If they were “guaranteed care” “up here”, why did they have to ship the kid off to a different country?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/28 @ 5:25 pm #
Guaranteed care equals dead babies is the takeaway here. This is what the Barack Obama intends for our little country too.
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 5:31 pm #
dead babies? obama votes yea
Comment by SBP on 6/28 @ 5:38 pm #
Not to worry. Obamacare will provide FULL funding so that each hospital can have a dirty linen closet for the babies to die in.
Comment by charles austin on 6/28 @ 5:48 pm #
National sovereignty must be sacrificed at the altar of transnational progressivism so this can never happen again. Bad America, bad America.
Wonder what they would have done 10 years from now after Obamacare has eliminated the excess beds south of the border?
Comment by Ella on 6/28 @ 5:57 pm #
Looters, moochers, producers…
Ayn Rand, get out of my head!
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/28 @ 6:15 pm #
This whole story reminds me of a discussion I witnessed in a DC store some years ago. A man was haggling over a certain rare physical security item for his home. No longer in production, and being in possession of just 5, the store owner had priced the item dearly, being of the opinion that if you needed it, you’s pay the freight-so to speak…
During that haggling, the prospective customer got a bit incensed over the owner’s intransigence when it came to price, and at one point declared, “Why should I pay Y dollars to you when X on the internet advertises these all day for half what you are asking”…
Non-plussed, the owner quietly said to the man that he was aware of what X was selling them for; since other commercial customers of his had recently tried to purchase some from X, and the stubborn fact was that X didn’t have any, nor could he readily get any. “But”, he told the inquirer, “You should feel free to order one from X, since he offers such a better deal”…
The customer threw his hands in the air and said, “But X doesn’t have any!, and I need it”
“Well then”, said the owner, “I guess you’ll just have to pay me the price I’m asking then…”
This parallels the situation Sticking and Cap’n Ed describe. And Stickings assertion that the Canadian system is soooooooo much better because of their universal coverage even though, you know, they couldn’t actually provide the necessary care is very much like the customer trying to imply the moral deeficiancy of the owner charging twice the price of an online dealer for an item when one had the necessary product and the other couldn’t get it-regardless of the difference in their retail prices…
For all of the legendary pragmatism of the collectivists, they sure seem to lack an ability to actually assess the facts of a situation…
The facts are that we have the finest on-demand health care system in the world. And, Obama and his apparatchicks would willingly degrade that system while breaking our national piggy bank in the name of “social justice” based on their absolute moral authority…
And Obama himself doesn’t have the intellectual honesty to admit that under his plan, his eeeeevolll typical white person granny would have lain in bed during the waning months of her life with a broken hip; because under the bureaucrats cost-benefit anaysis she wouldn’t have merited a hip replacement…
O!
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 6:19 pm #
or the 100 yo granny who needed a pace marker. she’s 105 now.
Comment by mongo78 on 6/28 @ 6:35 pm #
Darleen – I’ve used the hypothetical comparison of automobile insurance vs. health insurance lots of times, when discussing the problems of the current health insurance system. it’s interesting to see the light come on when you present an analogy that people can readily grasp.
although these days i’m a little hesitant to use it, seeing as how people might draw the wrong conclusion: “Hey, the state makes you buy car insurance, why shouldn’t they force you to buy health insurance?”
Comment by B Moe on 6/28 @ 6:36 pm #
I heard a similar story, Bob, except the owner said, “If I didn’t have any, I would sell them at half price, too.”
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 6:37 pm #
with O! you can’t make this stuff up:
Chambliss blocks regulatory pick over animal lawsuits By Alexander Bolton Posted: 06/28/09 07:57 PM [ET] Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court. Obama has picked Sunstein, his adviser and longtime friend, to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office that has power to review and assess all draft regulations proposed within the administration. But Chambliss worries that Sunstein’s innovative legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in court against a lawsuit filed on behalf of his chickens or pigs. Chambliss told The Hill that he has blocked Sunstein’s nomination because the law professor “has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks.†Indeed, in his 2004 book, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Sunstein wrote: “I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law.†More specifically, he wrote: “Laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended or interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors.â€
Comment by B Moe on 6/28 @ 6:40 pm #
Now that I think on it, that is probably why thor is so free with his wisdom.
Comment by comatus on 6/28 @ 6:48 pm #
“I would sell them at half price, too.â€
Better, but still lacks the Borscht Belt touch. It’s the butcher: “Lady, if we were out, we’d give ‘em away.” Now, see, that’s your gnostic wisdom.
Comment by hudson duster on 6/28 @ 6:49 pm #
Didn’t surprise me when the liberal press up here played the story that way, but didn’t expect to see it done like that in the U.S. It really got played as a happy ending when the parents got to Buffalo; no mention of the deficiencies in the medical system making it necessary to shuttle off to Buffalo in the first place. Oh, and daddy’s criminal record would have made it difficult to cross the border ordinarily….
Good timing, though, what with obamacare comin’ your way.
Comment by Darleen on 6/28 @ 7:27 pm #
“Hey, the state makes you buy car insurance, why shouldn’t they force you to buy health insurance?â€
No state requires more than the basic bare-bones liability — they don’t require collision and certainly the state doesn’t require auto insurance companies to cough up “comprehensive” insurance that covers everything including stuff like oil changes and tire rotations. Some states force health insurance to include “mental health” and there is now talk in Congress in forcing health insurance to include vision and dental.
And the only way the state gets anywhere near to enforcing the auto insurance requirement is not issuing car tags without proof (yet every day uninsured motorists are getting into accidents).
Of the 46 million “uninsured” more than half CHOSE to not buy insurance because it just isn’t a big priority for them.
I would really NOT want to require people to carry health care because we see the problems it creates, but sometimes I would like to kick 20 million uninsured asses until they get a catestrophic policy (sort of like basic liability…. 2, 3, or 5 thousand dollar deductable on admitted to the hospital care…all other basic health “maintenance” issues – checkups, doctors visits, lab work – are out-of-pocket)
Comment by McGehee on 6/28 @ 7:29 pm #
Just think, if we had a Canadian system they would have had to send that poor kid to…
Um…
A little help here?
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 7:38 pm #
some of us might if the state regulated insurance didn’t include trans gender surgery coverage or ob/gyn care for males
Comment by David R. Block on 6/28 @ 7:54 pm #
19. B. F. Egypt? Up shit creek?
Comment by David R. Block on 6/28 @ 7:54 pm #
Should have been 18. Dagnabbit.
Comment by geoffb on 6/28 @ 7:56 pm #
I’m told Cuba is good, but it could be an old liberal tale.
Comment by AndrewInON on 6/28 @ 8:00 pm #
SBP, you hit the nail on the head with your question. To help with your confusion over the definitions, I offer the following translations.
The meaning of “guaranteed care” is “guaranteed access to a waiting list.”
The meaning of “up here” is “anywhere in the oh so much more moral, more righteous, and just all around better, not to mention modest, country of Canada.”
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 8:14 pm #
the whole point of the leftists advance is to push the current system to a politically believed “tipping point” whereby a federal takeover is necessary. at this point we(constitutional people) should be forcing this issue back to the states. witness mass and hawaii failures on single payer system. this system being promoted has already failed small time
Comment by Jess on 6/28 @ 8:32 pm #
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Stickings’ rant is cr*p. Pure, unadulterated cr*p.
Anybody here know how to use teh intarwebs? See, when I go to the Canadian Govs websitethingy, I find that even after 6/1/09 there are 4 Provencial Driver’s Licenses still valid for ground travel to/from the USA: BC, Quebec, Manitobia, and one other. Guess which one is the fourth? Anyone know where Hamilton is???
Feh.
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 8:39 pm #
easy access from the north west territories?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/28 @ 8:40 pm #
oops it’s Liza Mundy of teh WaPo what is pimpy … Tim Graham is the whatever guy at that media blog
Comment by Darleen on 6/28 @ 8:45 pm #
thanks, hf, corrected
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/28 @ 8:47 pm #
they haven’t really looked at that lately have they?
Comment by SBP on 6/28 @ 8:49 pm #
I would like to kick 20 million uninsured asses until they get a catestrophic policy (sort of like basic liability…. 2, 3, or 5 thousand dollar deductable on admitted to the hospital care…
Right. That’s what I did when I was in a gap period between the insurance from my previous job running out and the insurance from my current job kicking in.
I bought a high-deductible Blue Cross policy (on-line, took about 5-10 minutes) after reasoning how much I could afford to pay out of pocket without it ruining my life for the long term.
$5,000 is a bite, certainly, but it’s not a life-destroying amount. And policies with a deductible that high are cheap. There’s no reason not to have one.
Comment by Joe on 6/28 @ 8:58 pm #
I am all for reuniting parents with their kid and I am glad he found a neonatal unit south of the border…but how about a please first?
Stickley, you are not helping here.
Comment by Joe on 6/28 @ 8:58 pm #
Stickley, Sticklings, Stickdick, whatever.
Comment by Darleen on 6/28 @ 8:59 pm #
$5,000 is a bite, certainly, but it’s not a life-destroying amount.
I’m amazed when I hear someone whine they have to shell out $20 for a co-pay for a doctor office visit. Usually the same person who thinks nothing of stopping by Starbucks on the way to work each morning and dropping $5 a shot, or gets [acrylic nail] fills every two weeks for $20 out the door, or goes to Disneyland a couple of times a year ($60 per adult) or….
But paying to see the doctor? Oh no! That’s a RIGHT! How DARE the doctor/nurse/PA/receptionist/etc expect to be paid for their time!
Comment by Little Miss Attila on 6/28 @ 9:04 pm #
I went without health insurance for a few years, but I was working at a magazine that just didn’t pay actual money–I was a supervisor making $18,00/year in 1990; my then-boyfriend (now husband) was getting by on 12,000. I had car insurance, but no health coverage. He had neither.
And the publisher pulled me into his office once to lecture me about what a risk I was taking, not having health insurance. I suggested that if they would pay me enough to cover food AND rent AND insurance, I’d be happy to buy it.
They were making money hand over fist, and it was based on the fact that a lot of people want to get into media, so they’ll work for next to nothing.
Comment by newrouter on 6/28 @ 9:09 pm #
you with pets do you have pet insurance?
Comment by Joe on 6/28 @ 9:36 pm #
I am not sure which is worse…this or Obamacare.
Comment by Joe on 6/28 @ 9:38 pm #
newrouter. No. There come a point when it is time to say good bye to a pet. It is always sad, but necessary. A simple shot and they drift away.
Apparently that is going to be the same for grandma.
Comment by David R. Block on 6/28 @ 9:53 pm #
Yes, I have pet insurance. You tell my wife not to get it. I don’t want to sleep with that dog.
My daughter has health insurance on her dog, too, but that’s a Maltipoo. Sometimes it’s the matter of protecting the $$ “investment” already spent.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/28 @ 9:56 pm #
mundy says that IVF is cheaper…
but here she makes clear that cheaper embryos have to come from donations … otherwise they’re a lot expensive … so it would seem to me that if you mandate IVF coverage you have to end up mandating some sort of embryo clearinghouse infrastructure if you’re gonna have any cost containment … and also when you use donated embryos you get to a price point where IVF is way way cheaper than adoption, which is interesting cause of there are ramifications to that.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 6/28 @ 11:56 pm #
Joe,
Holy crap!
Comment by pdbuttons on 6/29 @ 12:02 am #
my dingaling doctor kept telling me
to ssssh down..
he didnt like my ooo-ing and
aaaah-ing..
i told him i liked vowels..
and drugs ..
and that nurse who i thought was an angel..
Comment by pdbuttons on 6/29 @ 12:04 am #
he pretended to care..
Comment by lee on 6/29 @ 12:55 am #
You wanna know why Ronald Reagan was great?
This is why Ronald Reagan was great.
Via IMAO: In 1961, Ronald Reagan recorded a spoken-word LP (that’s a 12-inch grooved vinyl disc, for you folks born after 1990 – we used to play them on our gramophones) with a brilliant diatribe against Medicare called “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine“
Comment by lee on 6/29 @ 12:56 am #
Incidentally, I was born in 1961.
I’m old now…
Comment by Pixy Misa on 6/29 @ 6:30 am #
Hi all.
The server blew up again. :(
This time we had backup. :)
Sorry about the downtime. Fixing the Pub now.
Comment by SDN on 6/29 @ 6:44 am #
I’m sure that Sammy and our resident certified genius will be along to explain how the common occurrence of incidents like this one prove the superiority of everyone else’s health care to the horrible U.S.
Booorrrrrriiiinnngggg!!!!!!!!
Comment by Pablo on 6/29 @ 7:01 am #
I was wunnerin where pw went. O!, give us mandatory server insurance!
Comment by LTC John on 6/29 @ 7:10 am #
I thought it was a DOS attack by angry armadillos…
Comment by serr8d on 6/29 @ 7:23 am #
Even smells better. That fresh scent of new server!
(Pixie, you could’ve accidentally ‘lost’ all of thor’s comments; you know, it’d be like spraying Lysol on a countertop. Killing off nassty bacillus infectives. And Stalinist apologists. )
Pingback by Where ya gonna go when WE nationalize health care? » Cold Fury on 6/29 @ 7:23 am #
[...] More from Darleen: Stickings evidently didn’t have a grandmother like mine. Among her many hard-headed sayings she [...]
Comment by Carin on 6/29 @ 7:27 am #
Honestly, is there nothing liberals won’t blame on 1)Man caused Global
warmingClimate Change or 2)Inadequate health care.Shit, they care companies were blaming health care costs. @@.
If you look at unions and the health care – they have such a pool of employees that if it’s NOT working THERE… it’s not going to fucking work with the general public.
Either you have high premiums OR you must pay a goodly portion of your 1) Prescriptions and 2) doc visits. Period.
I could scream when I hear folks say they haven’t had a check-up because they don’t have health care coverage. @@. You can’t even fucking pay a doc visit when you’re not even paying for health care?
I bet a lot of those folks play the lottery.
Comment by Carin on 6/29 @ 7:38 am #
It’s funny. So, it was ALL THOSE KIDS that made them cheat on each other? That turned Kate into an uberbitch and Jon into a wet noodle?
Ah. Glad they cleared all that up for me.
If children don’t accentuate one’s need to FOCUS on being a family unit, I don’t know what could.
Comment by Carin on 6/29 @ 7:39 am #
I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the probability of divorce in correlation to the number of children the couple has.
Comment by Pablo on 6/29 @ 7:48 am #
I’m gonna guess abortion.
Comment by mojo on 6/29 @ 8:00 am #
The United States – Canada’s Emergency Room
Comment by Pablo on 6/29 @ 8:09 am #
Hey, our little country might not have gone completely insane! It turns out that, despite the decision of the wise Latina, that it isn’t OK to discriminate against people because they’re white. Ricci won at SCOTUS. The disturbing part is that it was a 5-4 decision on what should have been a slam dunk.
Comment by Vlad the Impala on 6/29 @ 9:45 am #
@53 Carin:
Or the probability of divorce in correlation to the number of hours that TV cameras are fixed on every last good/bad thing you both do and say.
How can that be healthy?
Comment by SDN on 6/29 @ 11:32 am #
Look at the VA, at DoD, at the Indian reservations, at Medicare, at Medicaid. They haven’t managed to make it work ANY time it’s been tried.
What’s that definition of insanity again? same thing, different result, etc.
Anyone who thinks this will work is by definition nuts.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/29 @ 1:25 pm #
yeah, I’m kinda waiting to see what happens with one of my doctors, as of June they no longer deal with insurance. It’s cash only.
Comment by Diana on 6/29 @ 2:48 pm #
It won’t be allowed, Maggie. Doc’s only charge what the gubbmint says they can, and they have to FILE THE PAPERWORK!!
Comment by SBP on 6/29 @ 3:03 pm #
Ronald Reagan was a liar and a fraud. He was no Obama.
Reagan had an approval rating of 73% around this time in his first term.
Obama, not so much.
He’s cratering, son. Sorry.
Comment by lee on 6/29 @ 4:43 pm #
Can you imagine if he had the press Obama gets?
Think mid nineties…
Comment by SBP on 6/29 @ 4:48 pm #
Right, lee. Every single MSM outlet was in a spittle-flecked rage against Reagan, and he still bitchslapped Carter, then bitchslapped Mondale four years later.
Comment by SBP on 6/29 @ 4:52 pm #
For all the trolls:
This is not a “mandate”.
This is.
So is this.
Comment by lee on 6/30 @ 1:32 pm #
Cool. More Obamacare.
Pingback by Steynian 369 « Free Canuckistan! on 6/30 @ 7:11 pm #
[...] ALLEGED MISCONCEPTIONS about Canadian healthcare; The definitive example of chutzpah …. [...]
Trackback by Democrat = Socialist on 7/31 @ 7:17 pm #
Something That’s NOT Funny Produces A Funny…
First the NOT funny:
via Ed Morrissey comes the story of a 14-week premature, 2 lb 4 oz baby that needed a NICU incubator, but whoopsie! the baby was born north of the border and, shucks, don’t you know there wasn’t an empty space in a NICU anywher…