Health care and equal treatment for all

Universal healthcare is about equal treatment and dignity for all. Canada is not a communist country forcing low quality healthcare upon its citizens. As a Canadian studying at BSU, I have experienced your system and mine firsthand, and I prefer the Canadian one. Have you experienced both for yourself, or are you just buying into all the lies the American media corporations are dishing out? As an international student I pay SHIP (Student Health Insurance Program) fees here to get the exact same quality of healthcare as I receive at home, only here (despite SHIP) I also received several pricey bills for items that are routine (and of course free) at home. Canada puts people before profits, and doctors are not swayed by drug corporations who copiously write over-priced prescriptions by the dozen.

Is there really “liberty and justice for all” here in terms of healthcare? Based on what many Americans have told me, there is not. It is more a case of the “Haves” and the “Have Nots.” I know an American with a good government job who still paid $350 for a much-needed test under her work health insurance. She thought that was a great bargain. I find that sad, as a Canadian for whom medically necessary tests and treatment are free at home. Further, Canadians are not forced to go to a certain doctor or clinic, but I imagine people under some healthcare plans here might be.

Having survived a near-fatal car accident, I endured three months of hospitalization, spinal surgery, physiotherapy, plastic surgery, and a year of rehabilitation. The worker’s compensation board (a pseudo-governmental agency) and the government health insurance, ensured I had outstanding treatment and care, which explains why I am as well as I am today. During my year-long recovery, I researched how much my healthcare would have cost me in the US: over a million dollars, enough to financially ruin me presumably for the rest of my life. I highly doubt an HMO here would have picked up even half of the bill. By the way, your horrific tales of impossible wait lists and inefficiencies have been entirely untrue in my experience. Personally, I fear having something happen to me here and my “SHIP not coming in.” In my country, if a citizen gets cancer he/she does not go bankrupt from treatment, nor can a pop star rent a whole wing of the hospital if she’s having a baby. Everyone is treated equally with respect and dignity, as it should be.

While Hilary and Obama might have unrealistic hopes of adopting the same system for a country with a population 10 times that of Canada, it is admirable to strive for improvement. In the U.S. it seems as long as people have money they can enjoy a very high quality of healthcare. In Canada, regardless of how much money people have, Canada will take care of the basic medical needs of its citizens, and not in a manner like that of a developing country as your article suggests. “Universal health care is bad and un-American.” (I’m sending that to all of my friends back home in Canada for a good laugh!) If that is true, then liberty and justice (equality) for all should also be un-American. I doubt most people on either side of the border would agree with that statement. The presumption that the poor are just not working hard enough to achieve the American Dream (and therefore earning the right to basic healthcare) sounds like elitist victim blaming to me.

Karen L. Carleton is a research assistant/MS (IPT) graduate student in the college of engineering.

KAREN L. CARLETON
Guest Opinion

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