Back when the public health care debate was raging in Canada, the Canadian Medical Association was originally against the idea. It was the Cold War era, and universal health care paid for by the government (in other words, out of your taxes) sounded like a commie plot to a lot of folks.
Yet, Tommy Douglas got 'er done, and Canadians have been living happily with socialized medical care ever since. It's not perfect. There's tons of things we could do to improve it. Yet it works. Nobody goes bankrupt in Canada because of their hospital bills. That's the number one cause of bankruptcies in that bastion of for-profit health care south of us.
Although there's a decent flat-screen in the room, me and the Farm Manager tend to watch different stuff. I'm pretty big on Jay Leno's Garage and old Rodney Dangerfield vids. The FM is more into streaming stuff. Recently she's been binge-watching New Amsterdam, the NBC series about a hospital in New York.
We're on our laptops ten feet apart, so I can sorta follow what's going on in her show. There's always some brave renegade doctors trying to find a way to wangle an essential procedure through the system on behalf of a patient who needs it but can't afford it.
The fact that it requires a rebel, a renegade, or a rulebreaker willing to game the system just to deliver health care to people who need it, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about for-profit health care.
Check out this list of who spent what lobbying the US government last year. The for-profit healthcare sector easily surpasses $100 millions in lobbying expenses. That tsunami of cash eventually shuts up every "progressive" who ever made a noise about single-payer, from Hillary to the Squaddies.
Tommy D. was voted best-loved Canadian in a CBC poll a few years ago. Not only did he bring Canada universal health care, he gifted Hollywood Shirley Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland.
Now that's a legacy!
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