My experience with Canadian health care is certainly different from Adolf Blackburn’s (“Canadian System better than others” April 1, 2010). My experience suggests that the health care system there is a classic example of how badly governments manage enterprises of any kind, primarily because health decisions get all mixed up with other political issues. One minor example: a town on Vancouver Island lost its saw mill; and, although all the hospitals have brilliantly equipped laundry facilities, the health ministry makes all of them send their laundry to this somewhat inaccessible west island town to provide work for its inhabitants. Political decisions like that are made all across Canada. Patient care takes second chair.
My husband was a scaler who suffered a logging accident in 1985, breaking his back. He lay on the floor of his house living on heavy doses of narcotics for 3 months before they could free up the proper surgeon to attend him. You might suggest that that was ancient history and that BC has cleaned up its act since then, but two years ago my best friend, an osteoporosis victim, snapped her back and lay on a gurney in the hallway of the emergency room of the Nanaimo, BC hospital for 8 days before she was attended to.
More recently my husband suffered some stomach discomfort. The doctor suspected cancer, but my husband would have had to wait 3 months for a colonoscopy and knew that he would probably have to wait another 3 months at least to schedule the operation if he did indeed have cancer. Because a local surgeon had had a cancellation and could do surgery immediately, he opted to trust the diagnosis and they cut out three feet of his colon. He died of complications. Had he had the colonoscopy, they would have discovered that he had a ½ inch tumor that was very slow growing. He could have lived to 90 before it would have caused him any problem. His real problem: Diverticulitis.
And the problem is wide spread across Canada. When there is no more room in critical care units in Canadian hospitals, really critically ill patents, those with severe brain injuries, for example, bleeding in the brain, are whisked to operating rooms in the US. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail about 150 patients a year are sent to hospitals in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, and New York. “Some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.” Recently there was no room in neonatal center anywhere in Canada for the mother of quadruplets.
On my last trip south at the end of May, I stayed over in Victoria, BC, in order to catch an early boat. In my hotel room I watched a piece the evening news had video of a kid, head in a halo, heck in a brace, left leg bandaged and elevated. According to the reporter, he would have to wait 15 months for an MRI as everything in Canada was booked. I have since Googled, trying to find out how it was resolved, but I get no hits.
No one knows what the consequences of these delays are because no one has the right to review the evidence. I tried to get copies of my medical records as well as my husband’s, but was told that if my American doctors had any questions they could telephone. And the evidence is even more tightly held for patients treated out of country.
When asked if any patients transported to the United States had died, Mr. Jensen, spokesman for the Ontario Health Ministry, said the “ministry does not specifically record the outcomes of health services provided out of country.” The consequences of critically ill patents waiting that long for care are obvious, aren’t they?
Canada is a very wealthy country of under 40 million, rich in natural resources. Can you imagine the complications for a country of more nearly 400,000,000?”

My Open Letter to Karl Rove

Thank you for writing Courage and Consequence. We needed that. Many of us have lost faith in the political process. Your book renewed mine by helping me to recognize once again that politics in a democratic republic is necessarily messy. It also rekindled my respect for politics as “the great moving expression of our democracy.”
A distinct mark of your strength of character is that you were so openly able to accept responsibility for your mistakes. Some of your humorous stabs at Norwegians are so funny because they are so true. “Norwegians don’t dance, they twitch.” Painfully true. “The Norwegian who loved his wife so much he almost told her.” That was my father and my grandfather both of whom loved profoundly. I thought that ability to be self deprecating, that capacity to recognize personal failures might be distinctly Norwegian as well.
You also own up to mistakes made by Republicans who indulged in corrupt behavior and thus threw always their chance to make a real difference. It seems, however, that Republicans in general are philosophically more responsible, more principled. I think of Al Gore’s inability to stand firm on any issue, the way Reid and Obama sabotaged immigration reform and then railed about Republican racists, Kerry’s inability to clarify his many conflicting votes on Gulf issues. The liberal philosophy, that the end justifies the means, seems to erodes conviction and character which makes George W. Bush’s courage and character more startling by contrast.
I share your profound respect for George W. Bush. Truman said, “The buck stops here.” G.W. lived it. I especially respected him for accepting responsibility for the Katrina disaster when he could so easily have excoriated Mayor Nagin for refusing to comply with the National Hurricane center\s mandatory evacuation orders. He could have blamed Governor Blanco’s inability to make the decision about ceding control of the situation to the federal government. Instead he accepted full responsibly. I also respect both you and him for your ability to stand straight and tall in the midst of the political storms that raged around you.
The one measure I disagreed with GW on was the prescription drug program for seniors. I felt that wee seniors are enough of a burden on the federal budget, and that the program added unnecessarily to it. You hint that it didn’t. That it “used market forces to drive down the cost.” I hope that’s true, but I’ll have to do some more research to satisfy myself. After all, you are just a politician.
Thanks again for the book, for your dedication, for your work ethic. I’m exhausted!

So Barney Frank gets re-elected. Barney Frank, “the colonoscopy gone bad. The proctological carbuncle that refuses to subside.” In spite of the fact that he, as much as anyone, is responsible for causing us all to implode inside the housing bubble. People do know that, don’t they? That he led the brigade that forced banks to make loans that were destined to default that caused the housing bubble that encouraged banks to find ways to make money anyway because that’s their job, that undermined the entire financial system.
And Jerry Brown? Californians do remember don’t they that Jerry and his father Pat, for 16 years, led California down the entitlement path that has destroyed the state? I liked him. I remember how noble he was, refusing to be chauffeured, declining the governors mansion in favor of a third story walk up (or something like that). Now here was a governor with the welfare of the people at heart. However, the Brown governorships could be the poster child for Thomas Sowell’s Unintended Consequences. Their attempts to cure all of California’s social ills resulted in a social ills boom. You get what you pay for.
Meg Whitman was blasted for suggesting that Jerry Brown was responsible for California’s failed school system, but it was Brown who, when Proposition 13 passed opted to start supporting schools with state funds which eventually undermined the constitutional mandate for local control of schools.
Even the Terminator could not blast through the stronghold of excesses at Sacramento, moderate their lack of fiscal discipline, mitigate their indenture to union bosses, restrain their unsustainable entitlement programs that the Browns set in motion.
Maybe salt sea zephyrs cripple the judgment, soften the brain. But why, then, is Florida not affected? Perhaps warm salt sea zephyrs are less noxious. Hmm. I think I’ll apply for a $4,000,000 federal grant to study the issue.

A Confluence of information

It’s strange how sometimes unrelated bits of information fall into place like pieces of a puzzle. For me, this week, it was a National Geographic story about the happiest people in the world, a rabbi’s enlightening discussion of the story of the Tower of Babel, and the Sunday school class’s examining of several Bible verses that counsel us to be alert, to wake up.
Dan Buettner, a National Geographic researcher recently revealed that people who live in Denmark and Singapore are the happiest people in the world. The investigation conducted by the staff revealed that, however dissimilar the countries are, the reasons for the inhabitants’ sense of well being were similar, feelings of contentment and safety.
Danes are happy because they are well taken care of, all of them, from cradle to grave. Danes pay some of the highest tax rates in the world, but in exchange the inhabitants lack for nothing. Because the system is so efficient, Danes feel "tryghed" -- the Danish word for "tucked in" -- like a snug child. The rigid penal code in Singapore makes it an unlikely place to evoke such happiness. The death penalty in Singapore is invoked more often and for a wider variety of crimes than any other nation on earth. Murderers, drug dealers, tax evaders and the like are quietly hanged in the pre-dawn hours of perhaps every other Friday, on average about 34 people a year. The process is shrouded in secrecy, but as a result the inhabitants of Singapore feel safe.
All such studies rank The United States much lower on the happiness scale. Perhaps we still believe what Benjamin Franklin said: “He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.” Perhaps we listen more carefully to lessons of history.
The Bible is largely a history of God’s struggle to preserve individual freedoms. I remember hearing the story of the tower of Babel as a child and thought that God was angry at Nimrod for worshiping the tower and, by confusing their languages, scattered the people as punishment. I recently heard a Jewish Rabbi explain the story from a different prospective. The peoples were scattered, not as punishment, but as a blessing. Nimrod had brought together all the peoples of the known world, and under his encouragement they built the tower, a stairway to heaven.
According to the rabbi, the bricks the Israelites used to build the tower were actually symbolic of the Israelites themselves. God prefers people to be individuals like stones, not identical like bricks. So, in Genesis 1:6 Jehovah says, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language.” To save them he confused their languages and scattered them. He had created each one of us for a special purpose and through our walk with God we discover and accomplish that purpose. When we allow ourselves to be gathered like sheep in safety and comfort, we find no need of God and, as a result, lose our sense of purpose.
The Israelis slipped almost willingly into bondage several times throughout their history, and many other civilizations have repeated the pattern of destruction, from bondage to individualism to great courage to liberty to abundance, then from abundance to complacency to apathy to dependency and finally back to bondage. The leaders of Rome destroyed individuality by the same method. Their influential people knew that if they provided their citizens with their bread and circuses, made them comfortable and amused, the leaders could maintain their power base and insure their wealth. Nero said, "Let us tax and tax again. Let us see to it that no one owns anything!” Every leader further enmeshed the citizens into a sense of dependency. Eventually the country was buried under a bureaucracy that stifled all freedoms.
The Israelis traded their freedoms for security. Rome was lulled to sleep by bread and circuses. China was held in bondage by England’s generous supply of opium. The Danes like being safely tucked in. The people of Singapore are willing to sacrifice freedom for safety. America, however, might be taking Paul’s advice. In his letter to the Romans he said, "The night is far spent; the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light" (Rom. 13:11,12).

My Quest

Today I am starting on my second quest. About a year ago I dedicated my mornings to a 1 year plan for reading the Bible chronologically. I did it. Much to my surprise, I stayed with it. Today I am starting on a thematic program. This time, however, I plan to use the readings as springboards for commentaries.
My first reading Daniel 11:36-12:13 establishes again why it is that kingdoms fall, why great nations destroy themselves. We become so self-satisfied that we“ have no respect for the gods of {our}ancestors.” Daniel 12, the second reading is Daniel’s prediction of the end times. I remember discussing this passage with April, my Jehovah’s Witness friend. She lead me to several passages that determined quite convincingly was Daniel’s “time, times, and half a time” meant. I need to refresh my memory.
Lynne was quite disturbed by the reading of I John 4 when he says, “Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.” She felt that love should not be limited to loving their Christian brothers and sisters, we should love everyone. I thought perhaps that the implication was that all of us, are recipients of God’s prevenient (sp?) grace, whether we know it or not, God is with us.

I always new my Dad was smart.

I always knew my Dad was smart. He could sit down with a book after lunch and finish it before supper. I just didn’t know that he was brilliant. His inability to pronounce words masked his aptitude. He’d say, “Listen to this, Cora Lee,” and read a passage that had stirred his imagination. I’d pretend to understand and then take the book and read it for myself. He was a sight reader, having been largely self-taught, quitting school and taking over the family farm. His father died when he was 12.
As a side note, I often though it odd that my sisters don’t remember spending time with my father, while my childhood memories are flooded with such images. Recently I have arrived at a conclusion as to why that would be true. I think I cried a lot and my mother had Dad take me off her hands. A conversation I had with Mrs. Holen, a woman who at one point was our housekeeper, suggested that. She told me she felt bad for me because I always wanted my mother and could not be consoled. My father probably relieved her of the burden, so I remember golden times, going to town with him, riding on the hay stack while he hauled it to the barn, “helping” build a new “shit house”; and in the course of those adventures overhearing bits and pieces of conversation, references to acronyms that made no sense but clearly communicated his disdain for FDR.
So, when Newt Gingrich said that the president he admired most was FDR, I was confused. According to my father, FDR was an arrogant man who thought government could use its unlimited power to create a more perfect world. He was a man who knew nothing about running a business, but who thought he could manage the entire economy, a man who knew nothing about farming, but who thought he could save those small ignorant farmers by forcing them onto communal farms where he and the members of his brain trust could show them how it should be done.
Needless to say, the more I read about Theodore and Franklin and that era of American history, the more I read Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams and Charles Payne, the more respect I have for my father. They all understand what unintended consequences are in store for us as a result of politicians who take pity on us. A recent article in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College (Get it. It’s free and most informative.) reinforced that respect (“The Rules of the game for Economic Recovery,” by Amity Shlaes).
I am sure the members of the brain trust were smart, and that was their tragic flaw, hubris, men who thought they could play God and manage the world. Ms. Shlaes tells one story about the way FDR managed the price of gold which made me laugh. He decided on what the price of gold should be each morning as he awoke in his bed. One morning he raised the price 21 cents. When he was asked why 21 cents he told Morgenthau, his advisor, that it was because 3 and 7 were lucky numbers.
It’s hard for me to believe that those in power aren’t totally aware of the unintended consequences of their manipulations. The market crashes of the 1919 and 1987 were just as severe but the sitting presidents rode it out and both crashes ended in a decade of economic boom. Fight a rip tide and you drown.

PBS stands for Public Bulls____.Station.

I listened to the PBS interview of Dana Milbank about his new "expose" of Glenn Beck, Tears of a Clown. According to him Beck is a very dangerous man who is influencing middle America with distortions of history. Beck supposedly said that the Dark Ages ended in the 17th century and that we bought Alaska in 1950. Now I often watch Beck and have never heard him say either, but even if he had, it would hardly be considered a "dangerous recasting" of history. The other thing Milbank says Beck lied about was his accusing a great American, Woodrow Wilson of supporting eugenics. Milbank is either lying or he knows little of US History. It is common knowledge that Wilson supported Eugenics. When he was governor of New Jersey he signed a brutal sterilization act designed to prevent defectives including simply poor children from procreating. He wrote of the need to improve “racial qualities.” Hitler sent members of his inner circle to America to learn more about how racial purity might be advanced through eugenics. The most outrageous accusation, thought, was that Beck was inciting violence, calling conservatives to arm themselves for a great revolution. Beck is, of course, totally committed to the Gandhi and King camp. You may not like Fox News, but always air both points of view. Not PBS and our tax dollars support their distribution of crap.