The Democrats are still determined to get health care reform passed by hook or by crook, and it's not hard to understand why. If they fail to get legislation on this they're not likely to get legislation on anything else - at least nothing else that's significant. If that happens they'll go down in history as perhaps the most ineffectual custodians of power in the history of the nation, having control of the executive and, until last month, a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a huge majority in the House and unable to do anything with it.
The problem for the Democrats is that what they want to do is make our health care system more like that of the Canadians, but those Canadians who can are fleeing their system in order to use ours, as this article at National Review Online illustrates:
The decision by Canadian provincial premier Danny Williams to travel to the United States for heart surgery has provided conservative critics of Obamacare with a concrete illustration of a long-held talking point: as socialized medicine stagnates, America's dynamic free-market health-care system is the envy of the world.
And some critics north of the border agree.
"Think about the absurdity of Canadians spending their income on medical treatment outside the country because it's not provided here at home," Brett Skinner, president of the free-market Fraser Institute, told the Vancouver Sun.
Skinner said that Williams, who opted for surgery in the U.S. on the recommendation of his Canadian doctors, was among an estimated 41,000 Canadians who sought health care in the states in 2009 due to long waiting lists and poor access at home.
If the Canadians, who theoretically have access to free care, would rather incur the expense of using our system why on earth are we trying to make our system more like theirs? Are any Democrats out there asking that question?
RLC
