How climate alarmism relates to Obamacare

Both are "sold" to a "stupid" public through a "campaign of exaggeration and outright lies" now known as "Grubering".

Vancouver Coastal Health funding radical drug user group

genuiNEWitty:

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) is probably the best example of the radical left making a mockery out of the city’s taxpayers. Funded through organizations like Vancouver Coastal Health ($250,437 in 2011), the group has been known for paying addicts to attend anti-gentrification protests, and using their government funded space as the headquarters for an anti-police group known for making racist and hateful attacks. ...

Rand Paul explains Obamacare's new codes for taking care of Americans

Rand Paul’s Hilarious ... Obamacare Explanation

“Your government just wants to take care of you,” ... criticizing the new law’s 9,000-plus pages of new regulations. “They don’t think you’re smart enough to make these decisions.”

And we think Canadian healthcare is bureaucratic, dysfunctional and, what's that word?, oh yeah, unsustainable. The Americans ain't seen nothin' yet.

Best healthcare system in the world

According to an unidentified whistle-blower:

Patients spent the first two weeks of September waiting as long as four days in Peace Arch Hospital [White Rock, BC] without treatment for serious conditions ...

... patients have been imperilled and nurses have felt “abandoned” – some reduced to tears – because of the situation.

... some had been waiting for days for doctors to administer treatment for such conditions as heart attacks, strokes, bleeding disorders, pneumonia and serious infections.

... [The whistle-blower also charges that special doctor subsidies at a Surrey hospital are drawing doctors away from Peace Arch Hospital]. ...

And the regional Health Authority's response:

"Racist!"

Sarah Palin: "Nancy Pelosi is a dingbat"

Here's the clip with Palin's "dingbat" comment.

The entire interview:

"A lie makes Obamacare legal"

Mark Steyn:

... "The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it – or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair."

... Like Nelson contemplating the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen, the Chief Justice held the telescope to his blind eye and declared, "I see no ships."

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but a handful of judges rule that it's a rare breed of elk, then all's well.  The Chief Justice, on the other hand, looks, quacks and walks like the Queen in Alice In Wonderland: "Sentence first – verdict afterwards."

... in attempting to pass off a confiscatory penalty as a legitimate tax, Roberts inflicts damage on the most basic legal principles.

... quibbling over whose pretzel argument is more ingeniously twisted – the government's or the court's – is to debate, in Samuel Johnson's words, the precedence between a louse and a flea. ...

[...]

US Supremes uphold Obamacare

Obama said "the individual mandate IS NOT A TAX":



Supreme Court says: "It's a Tax"

Romney says: "I'll repeal it!"

Obama calls Supreme Court "activist", "unelected"

Speaking about the 'Obamacare' challenge now before the Supreme Court, Obama referred to the Court as an "activist" and "unelected group" and that overturning his healthcare bill would be "unprecedented". Say, isn't that political interference with the judiciary?



Meanwhile: Fed Appeals Court to DOJ: You Have Until Thursday to Explain What the President Meant by ‘Unprecedented’ & ‘Unelected Group’

Boot the government out of our kitchens

I’ve long maintained that there is no such thing as junk food.  Today, Wendy McElroy provides more ammo against the food fascists:

... food is .. one of the main forms of self-control you exercise over your own life. It means something different to everyone, and that's what makes attempts by the state to set one standard for all so offensive.

... The typical counter-argument is to say that since society pays for our health care, we owe it to society to lead healthy lives. In short, your neighbour has a vested financial interest in what goes into your body. If you won't take care of it, the government will make you.

This line of reasoning - rather than justifying a Nanny State or a nosy neighbour dictating your personal choices - constitutes a powerful argument against socialized medicine, but it doesn't do much to say that the government should control what you eat. If socialized medicine had been advertised decades ago as a government mandate to control the minutia of your daily life, then it would probably have never been implemented....

... We need to kick the government out of our kitchens.

Read the whole column.

Ilegal dope vs tobacco - mixed messages (and lying scumbag politicians)

Today the Supreme Court of Canada ruled (unanimously) that Vancouver's "supervised drug injection" site ('Insite') can stay open:

To force the site to close “would have been to prevent injection drug users from accessing the health services offered by Insite, threatening the health and indeed the lives of potential clients,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the ruling. 

It thereby constitutes a limit on the section 7 charter rights of drug addicts - life, liberty and the security of person.

So the Supremes ruled that enabling illicit dopers is good for their health, life, liberty and security.

Then we have another class of (legal) users - smokers, who have been attacked mercilessly and kicked while they're down.  In BC the health minister is now threatening smokers with another kick - forcing them to pay higher health fees:

“Some people, in B.C. about 14 per cent of the population, continue to smoke and they’re going to cost more,” de Jong said in an interview. “Maybe they should contribute more.”

Civil liberties and ethics experts think it's a crappy idea, primarily on "slippery slope" grounds. As far as I know, no one wondered if it might be unenforceable.

Also, Minister De Jong neglected to point out that the government is already taxing smokers to death:

The province collected $682 million from tobacco taxation in the 2009-10 fiscal year, $708 million in 2008-09 and $692 million in 2007-08.

That probably more than covers additional health costs. And I'm sure that De Jong would prefer that no one mentioned any studies like this one in the New England Journal of Medicine which found:

... In our study, lifetime costs for smokers can be calculated as $72,700 among men and $94,700 among women, and lifetime costs among nonsmokers can be calculated as $83,400 and $111,000, respectively. This amounts to lifetime costs for nonsmokers that are higher by 15 percent among men and 18 percent among women.

Altogether this spells "CASH GRAB" from (and harassment of) smokers to offset the cost of enabling dopers.

BC funding quit-smoking therapy

Predictably, doctors think it's just great.  But not everybody's happy about it, because quit-smoking schemes are:
 

notoriously ineffective.
notoriously ineffective and costly.
and, how come the gov't doesn't fund diabetes treatment?

Where's the medical justice?

What BC doctors earn

This document ("Blue Book") lists the BC government's gross payout to each individual physician, organization and hospital in the province for the year 2010.  Other years available here.

[Via]

Bill Gates wants death panels

Bill Gates advocates what his fellow travelling "liberals" have denied - "death panels".



Video here.

Well, at least best he's honest.

Doctors converge in BC

That would be American doctors converging in BC.  The usual way to get help from the US medical system is to travel south.  But this time a motorcycle accident in BC had the injured rider tended to on the scene by two doctors on vacation, both from Seattle.  Coincidentally, they knew each other and one was a former Canadian who was:

... originally from Vancouver, earned his medical degree from the University of B.C., and went to the U.S. in the 1980s when he couldn't get a billing number from the provincial government, which had then put a freeze on hiring more doctors. Our loss was the U.S.'s gain. Parker is now vice-president of U.S. Health-Works, a network of more than 140 medical clinics across the country.

Now in BC there is still a huge shortage of doctors. Here in Surrey there are 10 taking new patients.  Only two are Canadian trained. None are US trained (naturally).  The other eight are from South Africa (2), the UK(2), India(2) and Pakistan(2).

Great system, huh?

Danny Williams: '... this is my heart, it's my health and it's my choice.'

Danny ("Big Mouth") Williams makes a good point - I especially like the "it's my choice" part. But his point runs counter to what he preaches for the rest of us.

It would be great if we all had Williams' "choice" in these matters. The problem is that Williams and his political ilk go out of their way to promote a government monopoly on healthcare for the rest of us - that is, they promote universal lack of choice.

As for Williams' specific medical problem (a leaky mitral valve) he says that in Canada he "wasn't offered" the treatment he received in Florida. That sounds a little weasely. Did he ask for it? If so, what was the answer? It's likely done in Canada but for whatever reasons it wasn't as good a choice as going south where, thanks to the American system, it's readily available.

Update (Feb 24): National Post editorial today:

My heart, my health, my choice. With those six words, Danny Williams neatly summed up the case for private health care. No matter how much the Newfoundland and Labrador Premier goes on to defend Canada's state health care monopoly, the damage has been done to the case for a single-payer system. He has exposed it for what is: a charade with often tragic consequences ...

... Together with North Korea [and Cuba?], Canada is the lone holdout that denies its people choice over one of the most important aspects of their lives: their personal health and well-being.

... Mr. Williams was perfectly within his rights to opt for his superior surgery. But all Canadians should enjoy this choice -- and they shouldn't have to show their passport to get it.

Danny Williams’ (non) confidence in CanuckCare

Newfoundland Premier Danny (Big Mouth) Williams decided to go to the USA for his heart surgery. This recent story out of Victoria documents an example that illustrates the likely reason he did so:

... Jo Danielson is living on the edge with an abdominal aneurysm, a dangerous bulge in her aorta ...

... doctors have recommended ... endovascular aneurysm repair, in which a device called a "stent" is inserted into the diseased aorta...

... But she will have to wait until April ... The health authority has placed a cost-saving, yearly cap on the stent procedure because of the extra cost ...

... "We've literally had the rug pulled out from under our patients," said Dr. Jim Dooner, head of vascular surgery for VIHA.

... It's a form of accounting that Dooner says is "absolute lunacy and it is wrong."

In other words CanuckCare involves bureaucratic rationing based on the calculations of government bean-counters. [Note also how government health agencies like to call themselves "Authorities" rather than, say, "Services". They want to make sure the peons clearly understand where they fit in the pecking order.]

In the USA there is no government forced waiting (at least until ObamaCare comes along). So Williams’ decision to go to the USA was the wisest move he could make from a personal medical standpoint. However, Lorne Gunter makes an excellent point. Professional politicians like Danny Williams and his ilk are responsible for shoving a government health monopoly down Canadians’ throats and denying ordinary folks the level of care they insist on for themselves.

From the comments in Gunter's piece:


As Kate McMillan often says - "Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough".

Updates:
Here's Ezra Levant, and;
Rex Murphy goes easy on his fellow Newf. Murphy makes the point that we're operating in a "vacuum of fact". There's some truth to that, and I can believe that Newfoundland may not have the treatment he needs. However, it's unlikely, whatever Williams' precise problem, that treatment is unavailable anywhere in Canada. If it is available here, then he's hypocritically jumped the entire Canadian queue by going south.

Canada just lost its private healthcare system

The Dems just passed Obamacare in a 220/215 vote in the House. So now where will Canadians go for private healthcare once the Americans start rationing theirs?

National Post backs Obamacare

The National Post editorial board has come out in favor of Obama's public option. What is this, socialist Mondays for the NP?

The editorial is correct that more choice is most often better for consumers. But it overlooks a glaring exception - which is that the choice of a ‘public’ (government) option is, for many reasons, a very bad one. Government involvement inevitably politicizes the process. Government is in a position to legislate rules favorable to itself. Government is in a position to use taxes coerced from the private sector to compete against the private sector. In other words government competition with the private sector is inevitably riddled with conflicts of interest (or, less politely, "corruption").

Furthermore noting the strong statist tendencies of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular it is highly likely that whatever steps it takes towards setting up a public option are merely first steps in an ever expanding role for government and eventually the end of many private choices. Legislating a public choice now will likely lead to less choice in the future. Eventually American healthcare could wind up looking much like Canada’s. And then where would we go for the treatment denied here?

These are some of the real reasons for the strong opposition to Obamacare.

Bennett spreading Canadian healthcare bullcrap

Liberal MP Carloyn Bennett testifying before a US Senate committee:

...

"I believe we need to defend our system in order to help the president and help our neighbour's citizens to make sure that no child is born uncovered. This is, I think, our responsibility as a citizen of the world," Bennett said.

... I was asked to explain why we pay less but get better results ...

Liberal bullcrap extraordinaire!

Your body, your health, your choice - government butt out!

Xanthippa highlights Thomas Sowell’s excellent four-part series on the hazards and deceit underlying Obama’s plans for socializing American healthcare - part of the debate Canadians never had.