Friday, July 31, 2009

Socialized medicine saved my life!

Myrna Ulfik, Wall Street Journal:

I have been battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer, for the past nine years. Last year, I was also diagnosed with uterine cancer.


I didn't run to Canada for treatment. Medicare took care of my needs right here in New York City. To endure, I just need the freedom to choose my insurance, my doctors, and get the diagnostic scans and care I need. And one more thing: I need hope that a treatment will be developed that can control my diseases the way insulin controls diabetes.

...I am still here because my care was managed by doctors -- not a government agency. My doctors do what the bureaucracy can't: They see me as a human being.

We've apparently reached the point in our national conversation on health reform in which the Wall Street Journal publishes arguments against "Canadian-style, government-run health care" by contrasting it with the American-style, government-run health program for people over 65, on which Canada's national system is modeled. (Canada's universal system is even called "Medicare.")

While both are examples of "socialized medicine," the author does not acknowledge this in the US case.

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