HealthCare Reform: You’re Not Helping, Sandy
While reading the City Paper interview with Unshackle Upstate’s Sandy Parker, I was struck by her casual dismissal of universal health care:
But if we had health-care reform in this country, the auto industry might be more competitive. The Japanese and the Ontario, Canada employers don’t have to carry that burden, so they can produce a less expensive product.
You know I am not a proponent of universal health care. And I know that everyone likes to point out the Canadian model as the one the US should follow. But tell me why when it comes to elective surgery, so many Canadians come across the border to get the care that they want? It’s because they can’t get it there, and if they can, they have to wait so darn long to get it.
I do think we need to reform the health-care system to make it more efficient. I think employers genuinely want to provide their employees with that benefit. But a national health care system is going to be a very expensive system. We need to realize that we have to pay for it if that were to happen. And the only way to pay for it would be to increase our taxes, which I don’t think is a good way to go.
OMG. Where. To. Start?
Lessee…
- She’s not a proponent of “universal health care”. Get that? We’re not even talking “single payer”, or “national” healthcare. Being against “universal” health care implies that she believes that not everyone deserves to have healthcare in this country. Maybe she misspoke.
- She uses “elective surgery” as the canard to argue against the Canadian system. So, in her opinion, the needs of people getting elective plastic surgery outweigh the needs of the vast majority of the rest of us just wanting plain old affordable vanilla healthcare?
- Oh, and who here has not had to wait “so darn long” for a specialist right here in the US? For some of my son’s doctors, you better call at least 6 months to a year in advance.
- Sure. A national health care system is going to be expensive. But the system we have right now is expensive, it’s just that the expense is carried by you and me, and funneled into the record profits seen by the insurance industry these last several years.
- Why not take healthcare out of the hands of people whose overriding goal is to maximize profit, and put it into the hands of people whose overriding goal (at least on paper) is to maximize the common good?
Is it just me, or do her arguments, does her whole attitude, sound like she’s coming from a rarefied, elitist place?
Healthcare is not just a right, it’s a key pillar in a sound economy and society.
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“Is it just me, or do her arguments, does her whole attitude, sound like she’s coming from a rarefied, elitist place?”
It’s not just you. Your entire assessment was spot on.
As a Canadian who’s covered by the ‘dreaded’ Canadian health care system, I have to wonder how Americans arrive at their conclusions about universal health care?
Do they have personal experience with such a system? Or are they merely cherry-picking archaic anecdotes and vague rumours that substantiate their position?
How much time has Sandy Parker spent in Canadian healthcare facilities as a patient? Has she ever accessed Canadian Critical Care units, had a scheduled medical procedure, had family members in palliative/geriatric/maternal/continued care units? Has she ever sought ophthalmological or dental services in Canada?
Has she ever experienced holistic or culturally-sensitive or alternative medical approaches within a Canadian health facility? Has she ever had to seek treatment in a facility while hundreds of miles away from home in another province?
I’ve been through all of the above and can speak from a position of personal experience.
It might also be worth noting there was a time when Americans were pouring across the border, taking advantage of medical/travel packages aimed at Americans who sought elective-Lasik treatment in Toronto because of cost and easier access than found in the States at the time.
Today, there are far more alternative and holistic medical facilities in the GTA and Southern Ontario than can be found here. Many of the procedures are covered by Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
My ten-year association with the Oneida Nation Health Department – one of the very few truly ‘socialised’ facilities within NYS – provided me with the best primary and secondary medical care in my entire life.
Sandy Parker, like so many other American critics, are merely speaking from their… hats. Parker has no more personal knowledge about the Canadian health care system than I have about her Rochester Establishment mentality.
Her pretentious, self-important let-them-eat-cake attitude is offensive, unbased and obnoxious. It reduces her credibility to the point of being duly ignored.
The expression ‘pompous twit’ comes to mind…
[...] City News also interviewed Sandy Parker. Ugh. Check out her take on the FAIR tax, a swipe at the FAIR proposal, and this ill-informed take on Healthcare reform. [...]
I read it… and wondered what Royal Decree enabled her to rise to be such an authority on international health care systems? Or national economic strategies? Cronyism, maybe? Hanging around the right people, saying the right things? Ya think?
Chances are pretty good that Sandy Parker has never been in a personal state of severe financial distress or at a total loss for a liveable-waged job with decent health care benefits.
That puts her in a diminishing minority. And when a small minority starts establishing policy for the greater majority, the results are rarely relevantly meaningful.
Especially in the local area.