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March 2nd, 2010 
QuadsZilla Canadian Premier Danny Williams goes to the US for heart surgery.
An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the decision.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a “minimally invasive” surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors.
“This was my heart, my choice and my health,” Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.
“I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”
But . . . but . . . Canada has teh best health cares system evah!
There’s no place in the world I’d rather be sick or injured than the good old USA.
“If the US enacts these so-called reforms, where will the Canadians go for care?” – Jay Leno
Posted in 
Poached this comment from digg (pure gold):
I’m just so confused here … I really need some nice Huffpo gold member to explain this to me.
So, when he says “I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”, that seems to imply that the best possible care was in the USA? But, I’ve learned from the many experts on digg that the USA is bad in almost every way but especially when it comes to health care:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
According to this list, he should have gone to Andorra or Malta to have the surgery. So confused …
And then: “His doctors in Canada presented him with two options – a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would’ve required breaking bones, he said. He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.
So, the doctor that he trusts, who grew up in Newfoundland (where’s that … is that close to Malta) moved to the US to practice? I wonder why that was? I’m sure it wasn’t because he could make more money in the US because the health/economics experts here on digg have assured me that we pay more for health care, but there’s no difference in the quality of care/doctors/equipment/procedures … we’re just paying twice as much for the exact same thing. But, it seems like the best doctor he knows moved … so strange. And it also seems strange that they seem to be needlessly breaking bones in Canada … I mean, if the level of care is the same, why the extra bone breaking in Canada? Is that good? Maybe the bone breaking is just something extra the Canadian system provides to make up for the missing doctors who are now inexplicably practicing in the US?
And then: “I would’ve been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. … I accept that. That’s public life,” he said
He must have misspoken because he seems to be implying that there are wait lists for heart surgery in Canada … but, he got immediate treatment in the US. Granted, he didn’t get the extra added benefit of broken ribs so I suppose there are trade offs in everything …
“”(But) this is not a unique phenomenon to me. This is something that happens with lots of families throughout this country, so I make no apologies for that.”
And this happens a lot and it’s not just that one province (not to mention the territories)? So confused …
What!?! Rich people can get good health care in the US? Of course the US doesn’t rank in the top 10 for any measurable medical statistic (except cost) but this one anecdotal story proves all that wrong.
He could have gotten the procedure in Canada, but there was a doctor in the USA that had the skill to do it without leaving an unsightly scar. It was just a cosmetic determination to go to the US.
Also, Quadszilla, you’re one of my favourite bloggers ever but your grammar… Can you fix the title of this post so that it means something? Between your capitalization, your use of apostrophes, and your intentional misspelling, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
“He could have gotten the procedure in Canada, but there was a doctor in the USA that had the skill to do it without leaving an unsightly scar.”
Yea, or an extra couple of broken bones. FTA:
“His doctors in Canada presented him with two options — a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would’ve required breaking bones, he said.”
Or the 7 month waiting list.
I did my best on the Caps for the rewrite and got rid of the apostrophe for you. But assplode, the farkism, stays.
“In the US, Rich people can get good health care.”
So, uhh, then what’s the problem?
My problem was the title, which you fixed. Thanks for that. Now it’s the correlation between the title and your point that I’m failing to grasp. If I didn’t respect you so much as a blogger I’d mistake this for one of those “you’re either a commie or a fascist” overly polarizing strawman arguments.
Yes, it is Hyperbole. But I don’t know quite what to call people that want to throw out the only good part of our Medical system (the free market) and replace it with socialized (that’s where the socialist thing comes from) medicine.
What we need to do is get government out of the US system of medicine. Two place where we’ve seen free markets really take hold in medicine are in the two areas that are not covered by the government: Plastic Surgery and Lasik. What’s happened to the prices there in the last 15 years? They’ve plummeted.
Stop requiring that people go to med school for 8 years and residency for 2 to become focused specialist. A trade school could train someone to ONLY remove appendixes in 24 months or less. Another could train orthoscopics.
Let people buy whatever drugs they want, from anywhere, without a prescription.
We do things like that, and Wallmart will be providing the kind of health care you want in no time with “Always Low Prices.”
Unfortunately, the debate seems to be “Government takeover of 50% or the Healthcare industry or Government takeover of 80% of the healthcare industry.”
Thanks very much for clarifying. Sorry to nitpick but either I’m not as bright as I tell everyone I am, or you didn’t clearly say what you meant.
My opinion is very different from yours on this matter but this is your blog so I won’t use it as my mouthpiece. I’m looking forward to more posts on SEO, though.
I like the nitpicking. But it’s not an either or:
You may not as bright as you tell everyone you are AND I didn’t clearly say what I meant is also a possibility.
Good SEO post coming this week. I promise!
After I got past the grammar assplosion of the title, I had a little chuckle to myself. Rich man pays to get dealt with quickly. That’s different to… where in the world exactly? Doesn’t matter whether you have a public health system or not.
This is a non-story. The stories are the poor people in the USA who get FUCK ALL when they have the same condition, versus people in the same situation in Canada, much of Europe etc. Waiting list? In some countries, yeah, but at least they have a chance of obtaining that care at all.
What’s better, an imperfect system or no system at all? Depends if you’re a rich, greedy fascist with no conscience I guess.
Rich and geedy? check and check.
fascist ? Not so much. I like small government.
No conscience?
Well, I’ve paid for 5 surgeries in my lifetime: all of them were for other people that couldn’t afford it.
Voting to take someone else’s money and give it to yet another does not give you the moral high ground.
It’s funny that people who are against health care reform always site Canada as an example of why we shouldn’t reform our system. Its an easy target because there are long waits in some cases and its a socialized system, but the fact is, its only ranked 30th in healthcare. Why would you compare our system to Canada’s unless you were affraid to compare it to the system that is ranked number 1 in the world?
France’s health care system is ranked number 1 in the world, but you never hear a word from anyone about it. I’ll just give some basic stats on their system compared to ours:
-Not a totally socialized system; uses 70% public financing, 30% private
-Despite the scary public financing part, they have worked it out so that all health decisions are made by the doctor and patient and people have a great deal of flexibility in choosing their doctors
-No long wait times at all
-Expensive drugs are included; in France, the sicker you are, the more care you are able to receive.
-The most expensive and even experimental cancer drugs are covered.
-They cover ALL of their people; 45,000 people do not die a year in France because they don’t have health care, as they do here in the US
-the sickest 3, 4, or 5% of people are exempted from their co-payments
-there are no deductibles
-Their system costs half as much per person as ours does.
-THEIR SYSTEM COSTS HALF AS MUCH AS OURS DOES
-Yes, their taxes are higher, but in the end they pay less overall because they don’t have to pay for the high insurance premiums that we do and they don’t have to pay for the high costs of people who don’t have insurance going to the emergency room to get health care as we do here. I don’t care whether I’m paying the money in taxes or premiums, I just want what is cheapest.
-Between $368 and $468 of every Americans yearly premiums are due to costs associated with these Emergency visits by uninsured people. Under the French system, these costs would not be forced on people and the cost of the care provided would be cheaper because it would be done in a more efficient manner. Unless you are arguing that we should simply not provide any care at all to the uninsured (good luck convincing the public of that) then this is a defacto socialized system we have in place; it just uses the most expensive method possible (emergency room care).
-Our current system’s costs are skyrocketing; we currently spend around 17% of our GDP on healthcare, and its projected to increase so that by 2017, healthcare will account for 1 in every 5 dollars of the US GDP.
-Medical costs are responsible for over 60% of all personal bankruptcies in the US
With all of these facts, why would we not even consider implementing a system like France’s? The current Senate bill is far from what the French have, but it is a great step closer and is far better than what we have now.
You might say that people don’t travel to France to have heart surgery and you’d be right. But if you think that every person here in the US can get heart surgery at the drop of a hat as rich, powerful, foreign dignitaries can, then you’d be wrong.
Do you really think that the reason America has the most advanced treatments for things like heart surgery (note this does not equate to best health care system) is rooted solely in our insurance system? No. We have the best doctors here because we pay them the most. I understand that our private insurance system is a major reason for that, but private insurance is not the only means to that end. As stated above, Frances system costs half as much per person as ours, so one change we could make is to allot more money to make sure we still pay our doctors well. We could do this and still cut our current costs greatly. We have a unique opportunity to even improve on the number 1 system in the world by taking all of its good parts and improving on where it might not be so good.
Also, do you really think that all of our scientific and technological advances are due to our private insurance/healthcare system? Did Jonas Salk create the Polio Vaccine because we had private insurance companies? No, he did it because he was well-educated and was greatly talented and many of our other medical breakthroughs/advances we’ve had in the past/present came because we have had the smartest people. I’m sure you know the quote from Salk: “‘Who owns my polio vaccine? The people! Could you patent the sun?…”
Sources:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92419273
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/28/barbara-boxer/boxer-claims-it-costs-1100-person-cover-uninsured/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States#Health_care_spending
Taxes in France:
43.6% of GDP.
Taxes in USA:
28.2% of GDP.
Health Care Cost in US:
16% of GDP
Health Care Cost in France:
11% of GDP.
In 2009 the annual shortfall for medical services in France reached €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and is estimated to be €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.
While the taxes France pays in health care are obviously part of their total taxes overall, they are only part of their total taxes. So putting each countries total tax percentages is not entirely relevant. They have higher taxes because of other things as well. I’m not advocating that we become France, just that we adopt their health care system.
Secondly, ok fine, add in the extra $13.5 billion. Even multiply it by 5 because we have roughly 5 times as many people to get $67.5 billion. Their system is still far and away cheaper than ours. We spent $2.26 trillion in 2007. Rising costs are not only a result of the payment delivery system. We as a nation and world are going to have to find ways to provide care cheaper.
So I don’t see how any of what you said makes much sense. France provides better care to all of its people for less money. What exactly am I missing? What are insurance companies but a middle man who takes too high of a percentage? Honestly, what value do they actually contribute? Choice? Choice in what? I don’t care about choosing an insurance plan. I care about being able to choose my health care provider and treatment options, and that it is paid for. All of this happens in France. All of that eliminates any need for choice in some insurance plan.
The health care plan industry makes 3.3% profit. Not Exactly Gouging people!
Having experienced both the Australian health care system and the American health care system, as both a well-to-do salaried worker and a poor student, it’s going to take a lot more than this nonsense to convince me that you guys have it right.
I live in Canada and I do not believe we have the best health care in the world. I do believe our system is on average better for our citizens than the USA system is for Americans. The United States is a lot larger and money talks so it is probably faster and easier to fly somewhere and pay a specialist a premium than it is to wait your turn for a less pleasant solution in Canada. I also have no problem with anyone getting health care wherever they think it is best for them. In reality every health care system will have its strengths and weaknesses.
Also a single instance in such a large system is pretty much irrelevant to the overall quality of that system. I would say that Americans are extremely egotistical about the state of their country and believe that if they keep chanting they are number one everyone will believe it.
Also you said “Stop requiring that people go to med school for 8 years and residency for 2 to become focused specialist. A trade school could train someone to ONLY remove appendixes in 24 months or less. Another could train orthoscopics.”
What the fuck are you talking about? There is more to surgeries than the procedure you need to know a lot about medicine to remove an appendix beyond the actual surgery. I think you don’t understand medicine or health care systems and stick to blogging about SEO where you are an expert.
Well, no, actually you don’t. And certainly not beyond 24 months of training. Hell. I’m sure I could remove an appendix with less training than that.
Do you need the guy that fixes your transmission to know how to rebuild an engine? Does the guy that repairs your air conditioning need to know how to build an entire house?
Does your web designer need to know how to admin an oracle database? or vice verca – does your oracle db admin need to be top a web designer?
No.
I’d rather have someone with no higher education that’s sat in and helped on 1000 heart surgeries do mine, than the guy that’s done 1 but can name all the BCAAs, and can name all the bones in the feet.
Specialization and division of labor would increase quality while bringing down prices.
This is ridiculous, how can you compare a car transmission or a website to a human body, if you screw up fixing a website or a transmission no biggy, fire the person who did it and get someone else in… screw up taking out an appendix and you have a dead body on your hands.
As for the American health care debate, who cares? If Americans want to treat their poorest, sickest and most vunerable citizens like rubbish let them. This isn’t about taxes or money, it’s about being a decent human being and looking out for the whole of society….not just the ones with deep pockets.
QuadsZilla,
All you have proven is that people with money get better doctors the same way they do in the US.
End of story.
ps: What do you have to say about Medicare as people get great care using it and Medicare for ALL would be the model for universal health care in the US (which as you should know, allows one to purchase additional medical plans on top of it to allow you to obtain better care and conditions aka your own hospital room)
These arguments against reform are so thin and useless, what do you do when you get sick, you are 45, self employed, and can’t get insurance because of pre existing condition (like my mother, an occupational therapist). These aren’t people that are draining the system, these are people that work hard as hell daily (way more than both of us, driving hours/day, doing home health visits, etc).
You really need to take a deeper look at issues past “oh im gonna get some taxes shaved”
Just explain to me why I should pay for your mom. Because I just don’t get that. I don’t even know your mom. I’m sure she’s nice and all, but if she doesn’t have a computer, I don’t think I should be compelled to buy her one of those either. And if it’s “because she’s part of society” then why not require me to pay for all the people in Africa who don’t have insurance either – and buy them computers. Why stop at just someone who’s 3000 miles away?
Just because someone is born in the same country as me is not a compelling enough reason for me to have to buy them shit.
Fine, you have made your point that because you have a lot of money, you and the people you know deserve to live, while less fortunate people die.
But there is a more important question I want to ask you though. I’m assuming you buy health insurance. You also said above that you paid for surgeries for 5 people in your life. Let’s just pretend for a second that we go back in time to before you ever paid for anything healthcare related in your life, and America had adopted the exact system that France uses. This is a system that, as I said above, costs about half as much per person. Do you honestly believe that your out of pocket expenses to date would be more than what they are to date if we had been under France’s system all that time?
Apparently you are blind to the fact that healthy workers allow for a healthier population, which allows for more productivity right?
Do you not realize as an individual in the United States, its can easily cost 100% more annually to have insurance vs working for a company, especially if you have a preexisting condition?
Do you not realize that insurance companies raise their rates haphazardly and way above the actual cost of medical care on a regular basis?
If you purchased 1000 domains a year, and the price of them went up 10% a year for the last 5 years, you could adjust for that and assume, but what happens when they go up, say, 40% one year, or, if they said, you have too many domains, were raising you up 70% this year ‘because you have to have them anyways to survive’, you wouldn’t be ok with that.
Now imagine that it is more than your income and its essentially a price on living or dying?
You must also not realize that many people without insurance use a hospital as their primary care facility, costing 10x+ what it would had they gone to a doctor (if they had insurance), which the cost is then passed on to you via local/state taxes and increased costs when you go the next time.
You need to look deeper at the issues more past your direct wallet, because, you miss the forest for the trees when the rest of your money is disappearing due to the inefficiencies in the medical system.
Even Health Insurance companies realize they need reform in the longterm or prices will be too expensive for anyone, its just that, in the short term they want it dead because of profits now.
My mom was an example, and apparently, you are too dense to make it past an example and must attack the person instead of the actual circumstances which created the ability for a middle class health care worker to not be able to afford insurance or plan for the increased costs if they did have.
Please respond to the substance and not continue with responding to the situation in terms of my mother. If you are unable to, well, then its obvious you have no fucking clue what you are talking about and just want to bitch without knowing anything (and paying for some surgeries doesnt count for ‘knowing’)
Productivity is a poor argument. We would gain be more productive if we made sure everyone had a computer and trained them on how to use it than by universal health care; but I don’t think there should be a government program for that either.
And where exactly did I “attack” your mom? I said I’m sure she’s a nice person but I don’t want to buy her shit. You want her to have something – YOU buy it for her.
Guess who’s workers are more productive – French or US? Guess which one has universal health care.
And you are sadly misinformed about health care companies and their huge “profits”. The Industry has a margin of about 3.5%. What are we going to reduce that to? 0%?
How much will that save? That’s right 3.5%! Will that let your mom buy health insurance?
The biggest cost in health care that can be eliminated is malpractice insurance. There should be an option where people can buy thing without the option to sue. Give up their right to sue for malpractice in exchange for substantially lower rates.
But tort reform isn’t even on the table with the current proposed “reform.”
Right now, US doctors pay more in malpractice insurance than they make practicing medicine in France. You want to reduce costs, then go after costs: that’s a cost.
Telling companies that they have to insure people who did not bother to get insurance until they have a condition will not reduce costs. If you think that’s such a great business idea, you’re free to start an insurance company that insures these types of people: tell me how that works out for you.
And where your most ill informed of all is in your delusional notion that government will reduce costs. Pick up a damn book on economics before spouting off your utopian ideas that have been tried 10000 times before but have never actually worked.
The problem is, is that you assume the insurance companies to be good players.
Telling companies that they have to insure people who did not bother to get insurance until they have a condition will not reduce costs. If you think that’s such a great business idea, you’re free to start an insurance company that insures these types of people: tell me how that works out for you.
Right here you exclude 90% of people that had insurance at one point and were dropped from their coverage and are unable to obtain it again at a reasonable price due to being priced out of the market, with no market for them to go to, thus preventing millions of people from ever being able to pay for a procedure without going bankrupt.
Americans are more productive than the French because of the culture, not because they are healthier population (which they are).
Want to talk about loss of productivity? What happens when a construction worker is injured on the job and then either dropped or priced out of his insurance, what does he do if the injury lingers and/or prevents him from working again? One less skilled worker .
To notion that everyone using a computer would solve stuff is nonsense.
Once again you miss the point that these people would still be PAYING to be on the insurance, a healthier population reduces medical expenses, and you buy the argument that they are only making 3.5% profit (how hard is that to do when you pay your executives millions of dollars to reduce earnings after expenses and salaries? Real Easy.
Medical malpractice is being looked at and it isnt a major expense in the average person’s doctor visit, it is a major expense for a doctor. The biggest costs in the medical system are inefficiencies, outdated systems, and increased drug/equipment costs. (plus others im surely not naming). How would you like it if you were injured by a doctor and couldnt recover, doubtful you’d like that. If you really think insurance prices are going up because Dr’s are paying a lot of medical malpractice, well you are willfully ignoring facts.
1) Larger pool of people (bargaining power w/ drugs, supplies, etc) = reduces costs
2) Electronic Health Care CMS’s = reduces costs
3) No advertising, partying, etc budgets = reduces costs
4) No CEO’s and top executives to rake in big bonus money = reduces costs
5) Proven that medicare operates at about 20-30% less expenses than a regular insurance company = reduces costs
6) National insurance exchange which if all rates are visible to everyone, you can actually see and pick whats best for you, and will be transparent and if someone raises rates up, you go elsewhere = reduces costs due to increased competition.
So, basically, yes, the stuff being implemented in the HCR bill currently will reduce costs and/or be able to take people on at a reduced rate.
You are still stuck in free republic land with most of the stuff you have laid out and many of your points have been negated by facts over the past year through discussion.
I have to agree with Quads on a lot of these points. Where is it that we want to eventually stop? Lets just say that we somehow make changes to the system to cover those that “can’t” (that’s in quotations because a large amount of people can pay for it, they just don’t)afford health care.
The next thing you will tell me is that there are millions of homeless people and for a modest tax per year, we could pay to put them into houses because everybody “deserves” that luxury. Yes, housing is a luxury, health care is a luxury, and extra income is a luxury. Unfortunately the only thing guaranteed to us is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. First thing that people will say is that the health part is referring to Dr.’s, health care, etc. which is not true. It simply means that nobody can take your life unjustified. And we are all welcome to the pursuit of happiness but unfortunately, some people catch the s*&t end of the stick and don’t reach what they see as happiness. It sucks but that is life.
Also, lets look at the real reason Danny Williams came to the US… Our horrible, evil system that is corrupted by money does something that many of these other socialized systems cannot… It provides an incentive for new technology, new procedures, and new ways to take care of people which.. Yep! you guessed it! makes that company money! And as long as there isn’t a restriction placed on how much money you or a company can make, that incentive for innovation will always be there. Lets not take away the main catalyst that built the foundation of our country.
The flaw in your argument is that increasing insurance costs has anything to do with innovation in the medical arena.
If you could find me an insurance company that has put money into reducing costs at the hospitals it services or has developed a life saving medical device with its profits, your argument would be a bit more legit.
Israel, where much great innovation takes place, has you guessed it, national health care.
Also, I believe its either Switzerland or the Netherlands that has high quality rates, a 100% private market, but has strict mandated cost controls in place.
I don’t understand why we can’t have both? Why should America settle on a system that offers the best health care in the world (to those who can afford it) and little to no health care for those that can’t.
What is wrong with a single-insurer style system, where people can still opt to use their own money to buy a private alternative (like private schools) if they want to, but everyone else at least has access to quality health care?
We don’t need to nationalize hospitals and doctors to make our system better.
Health reform should be at a state level – not country level
You should post more about politics and less about SEO, QuadZilla. People seem to be more interested in discussing this .. heh
The federal government needs to start doing the right thing. An outstanding beginning could be getting their noses from the medicine trade. They could not really take care of the work load that they have now. Precisely how are these people supposed to make this any more effective?