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Monday, June 22, 2009

A TRUE CANADIAN HEALTH CARE STORY

As America wrestles with Health Care reform and the mind boggling assortment of lies distortions half truths, promises denials and lobbying efforts by big business interests. Let me be clear America deserves nothing less than a Public Option health care system. America does not need insurance it needs a Government that cares about the health of its citizens

In Feb 1972 our first child was born. A boy healthy at first but when he was six weeks old he started projectile vomiting and unable to keep down milk. Diagnoses and emergency surgery indication pyloric stenosis a muscle surrounding the bowel is cutting off the flow. He is as healthy as a horse and 37 years old. After having received emergency surgery.

July 1973 boy number two was born. No problems till he started experiencing ear aches and specialist treatments were required. He grew out of the problems he had and except from a broken arm at gym class and multiple road rashes from skate boarding. Look at him now.

December 1976 darling daughter made it here kicking and screaming and changing lives forever. All was well until she was two and a half and got meningitis. Because our system works as well as it does she was diagnosed and on treatment within two hours of seeing a Dr. She was twenty one days in hospital and recovered fully

The total cost to my family for all the above birth, surgery, and critical care eighty dollars for ambulance service getting daughter to children’s hospital.
I can’t even begin to describe all the myriad issues around the growing years, but the cost of health care was never a real issue. The cost was contained it was affordable and universal when ever a Dr. ordered a test or procedure it was done without cost, and as much haste as emergency required

On Feb 14 1996 breast cancer demanded my wife have a radical mastectomy, chemo therapy followed along with radiation. This trilogy Wendy tagged as hack, poison, and burn. An apt description, but it did save her life. And instead of bankrupting this family it cost us nothing beyond our health care premium.

America is poised to make the most significant change it will ever make. This change will not only heal the sick it will empower the Nation. When the middle class and poorest people in the nation are no longer threatened with financial ruin by being sick or in need of critical care imagine the possibilities. When business is no longer hampered with high cost insurance and has a choice with a program that won’t cripple them then small business will flourish.

On Wednesday evening President Obama will speak to the nation on this subject listen to him and disregard the naysayer’s disregard the insurance lobby and blue dogs and republicans in the pocket of big business. Listen to the President get his back and push him in the direction he wants to go. This is the single most important reform issue in America today. Make it happen!

5 comments:

Annette said...

Great story, thank you for sharing. I am with you. We have to stand behind Pres. Obama and I am trying very hard to do just that.

With the poll numbers as high as they are, it is unbelievable the idiots in the Senate can't see it is what the people want. But money talks louder than we do, but we are still talking and hopefully our voices will be louder.

marain said...

The Canadian program sounds even better than the one in Austria!

It is mind-boggling that the most powerful country in the world is so low down on the scale of health care for its citizens that it is nearly a third-world nation.

Another area where the USA could learn from Europe is annual leave for the employees. One of the reasons I decided to stay in Austria was the six working weeks of annual leave that is the standard here for all workers. Talk about civilized!

It is great that you write about the importance of improving health care in America, Tango Daddy!

kcfoodtruckgroupie said...

Thank you for speaking on this important issue. I would like to submit your article for posting on a website called OpEdNews, if that is okay with you. This story speaks VOLUMES to the need for universal health care in this country. Every single argument that is currently being made against universal care can be boiled down to protection of the insurance industry. Our "representatives" need to be sent a message about who exactly they are representing.

Patricia said...

Everyone says that the Canadian system is fatally flawed - except for Canadians! The ones I've met and spoken to about it certainly wouldn't trade it for what we've got. Thank you for the first person account.

Tango daddy said...

Go for it KS!
Repost where ever you may please, this is for the world to see.