Coverage, Provision, What's the Difference?

Patrick McIlheran gets pretty smug when Newfoundland Premier Dan Williams chose to come to the United States to have a surgical procedure done:

But Williams didn’t go get his surgery in Montreal or Toronto. He didn’t see the best heart surgeon in Canada, one of the world’s most advanced economies and chock-full of smart, talented people.

He went somewhere in the United States, the health care system of which is regularly derided in polite Canadian circles as the Wild West. Investors Business Daily notes that other Canadian politicians, including Belinda Stronach, a cabinet member in the Liberal Party government in 2007, did so as well.

And no, of course those politicians didn't mean their trips as a knock on Canadian health care. Neither did the full 1% of the country’s population was sent abroad for care in just the past year alone meant it as an insult.

But it isn’t coincidence that, when Canadians need specialized care, they can't find it in their so fair but mediocre system.

For someone who wants to portray himself as being erudite, PaddyMac can come off looking quite the simpleton.

For most people with a command of the language and even rudimentary understanding of the health care system is able to differentiate between health care coverage and a health care provider.

No one on the left or right denies that the United States has some of the best medical providers or equipment in the world. But all of the best doctors and all of the best medical wonders does little good to someone who does not have the independent wealth or the adequate coverage to pay for it.

I would hardly expect that the USA tax payers were footing the bill. It was indubitably the Canadian health care system that allowed the Premier to come to the US by being the ones that actually paid for it.

But even has obtuse as Paddy was in his arrogance, he wasn't the worst offender. Kevin Binversie not only was unable to tell the difference between one who practices medicine and people that pay for said treatment, but also cannot tell the difference between a Premier and a Governor.

It must be all those French Canadians fault. It's like they have a different word for everything!