Layton on MSNBC on Canadian Health care/ U.S HC reform
Brilliant.
First Youtube and now Bloomberg.
The NDP strategic team is finally getting it.
Typical right-wing scaremongering. They did the same thing with Medicare for seniors in the 60s. Of course, the great irony is, that what Obama is proposing isn't even that. And it certainly isn't single-payer Canadian Medicare. But since when does truth matter to them.
Remember this interview is directed at an American audience overwhelmed by republican attacks on "socialized" medicine. It was intentionally stripped to the bare bones message that Universal Heath Care is NOT scary. Layton, of course (as does the rest of the NDP )has very real issues on the handling of the health care file in Canada both federally and provincially (see recent northern Ontario hospital rallies and Ontario's ndp response) and the corrosive reformatories/Neo Liberals doing their best to subvert this cherished Canadian value.
All the scaremontering is diredted to the Americans. I for one could care less what the right wing Repulicans or commentators say. Unfortunatly we have some in this country that would love to scrap our health care system. Two tieres means one for the rich and one for the rest of us.
Perhaps Layton should be looking towards an appearance on Jon Stewart's show? ;)
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na, i will pass,
Why would anyone give a damn about the health care debate in the U.S.? Should we also lecture them about the death penalty, maintaining a nuclear arsenal, and invading every country that dares to open its mouth for justice? This is a waste of time and space. Layton should pay attention to Canada.
Well unionist, I find that pretty damn funny coming from you, seeing as how you are always carrying on about Obama, and other US activities and lecturing even about them here. Usually the right utilizes that kind of hyporcrisy in action.
Plus I find it very short sighted.
Anyway. I thought it was really about glomming onto the US media machine to create profile using the media most Canadians now watch. Message: See, Jack Layton is someone, he even appears on US TV, and is recognized as an important voice by the Obama people, and so on and so forth. Harper has made extensive use of this trick.
Why no mention of Iggy cue?
The point is that if this debate in the US fails then the pressure on the Canadian system will be fundamental to allow even more privatization HERE. Right now, as weird as it might seem, the front line on public health care in Canada is being dragged into the US. If you think this issue won't enbolden powerful forces here than you must have missed the years after Clinton failed to democratize the US system even a little bit and the powerful push for privatization that occurred and is still running its course.
Exactly BA, which is what I was alluding to.
Well said BA
Whistleblower tells of America's hidden nightmare for its sick poor
When an insurance firm boss saw a field hospital for the poor in Virginia, he knew he had to speak out. Here, he tells Paul Harris of his fears for Obama's bid to bring about radical change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/26/us-healthcare-obama-barack-c...
Someone does need to take a run at these yahoos South of the border, and thank goodness Layton is around to do that.
Canadian health care hardly a Marxism threat
Sheesh! To hear the extremist rhetoric floating around south of the border, you'd think Canada's public health-care system was the socialist demon incarnate, hatched directly from the fevered imaginations of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves.
Cool it, America. Your health-care system is nothing to write home about, with some 46 million people sans insurance, with your managed care and gatekeepers, your doctors wasting time filling out insurance forms, and your insurance companies dreaming up ways to avoid paying out to people who faithfully paid their premiums for years. As economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times: "There's no question that some Americans who seemingly have good insurance nonetheless die because insurers are trying to hold down their 'medical losses'--the industry term for actually having to pay for care." Then, there are the bake sales to fund some poor soul's cancer treatment, and the bankruptcies of people overwhelmed by medical bills they can never pay. America, you in your glass house down there are hardly the ones to be lobbing stones across the border
http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Canadian+health+care+hardly+Marxism+...
Well unionist, I find that pretty damn funny coming from you, seeing as how you are always carrying on about Obama, and other US activities and lecturing even about them here.
You attend my lectures? Great, I never noticed. Pipe up once in a while.
Plus I find it very short sighted.
I've worn glasses since Grade 9. Not my fault. Not nice of you to make fun of me for that.
You know, remind, if Layton condemned Obama for killing people in Afghanistan, or for requiring passports at the U.S. border, or for not closing Guantamano, or for not sending Omar Khadr home, or for not passing the Employee Free Choice Act, or for not ending the death penalty in the U.S., or for breaking his promise to end the military trials, I'd consider that legitimate. Likewise, if he breathed the words "single payer health care system" and encouraged Obama to copy the Canadian system. Instead, Obama is getting ready to institute something which would (in his own words) allow everyone in the U.S. to keep the health care insurance plan that they now have, if they choose. For Layton to be seen as siding with that merely frightens me as to what attacks on health care he may one day tolerate in this country.
Are you still supporting Obama, as you obviously were before that election? Let me know. It may affect your mark in my class.
If it works why not do it?
Why no mention of Iggy cue?
Because it didn't occur to me to do so. Iggy wasn't the leader of the Liberals when Harper started using US media to project his message into Canada. Harper, as far as I know was the first to make a real effort to do so. Ignatief may be doing so as well. Layton is following on the tradition started by Harper. So it seems to me.
Iggy though is a bit of a special case. In my view he is something of a Washington plant. Who he really represents is a mystery to me. Probably aligned with the center of the Republican/Democratic party. More accurately, he is part of the US media establishment, already.
I didn't comment on wether it worked or not. Or if it was moral or not. I dont care. I was just pointing it out in relationship to Unionists and Remind's exchange,
The point is that if this debate in the US fails then the pressure on the Canadian system will be fundamental to allow even more privatization HERE.
It has already failed. Single payer is off the table. So is single plan, whether public or not. [url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obam... said[/color][/url]:
If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.
So, BA, we're supposed to start proposing alternatives in Canada to single payer for fear that it may get worse? I don't think so. We've had single-payer universal care for basic medical procedures (plus many other social programs undreamed of in the U.S.) for more than 40 years without U.S. dinosaurism stopping us. We don't need to support Obama's plans in the U.S. We need to protect and expand our own gains in Canada.
"Single payer is off the table."
It was never on he table in the first place because no where enough votes are there for it in Congress. But Obama is still proposing something that is vastly better than what exists now.
Why would anyone give a damn about the health care debate in the U.S.? Should we also lecture them about the death penalty, maintaining a nuclear arsenal, and invading every country that dares to open its mouth for justice? This is a waste of time and space. Layton should pay attention to Canada.
I think you're wrong here. If I may quote *cough* myself from another thread that didn't go very far:
Why Canada's health care system is being slagged by Americans:As of 2007, Canada's health care costs were $ 3,895 per capita, while USian were $ 7,290 (expressed in US dollars, over here: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf ). (Damn MAC-hating babble; can't do links properly.)
Let's do the math: if Americans adopted a system like ours, it would be this much cheaper: $7,290-3,895 = $3,395 per capita. The USian population is 306,967,726 (from the population clock). That's assuming the costs would be exactly the same, which wouldn't be the case; for instance, drugs are generally much more expensive in the US.
So: $3,395 in savings X 306,967,726 citizens = $ 1,042,155,429,770 total funds lost to health care corporations if the US adopted a Canadian-style health care system.
Why should we care if a bunch of knuckle-dragging greedy pointy-headed neo-Objectivist good old boys want to slag us? Let's do the math the other way: Canadian population as of today is 33,720,337 X $3,395 extra health care expenditures if we adopted the US system = $114,480,547,510 in potential profits to be had on the backs of sick Canadians.
With the potential profits at stake, we need to be afraid.
As I said, Sineed, we should pay attention to Canada. Thanks for reinforcing my point.
As for Obama's proposal being "vastly better" than what exists now, Stockholm, so what? If adopted, it would still be the most regressive and individual-wealth-based system in the West. Sort of like freeing half the convicts on death row - it's vastly better, but it's still a failure of abolition.
The point is that if this debate in the US fails then the pressure on the Canadian system will be fundamental to allow even more privatization HERE.
It has already failed. Single payer is off the table. So is single plan, whether public or not. [url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obam... said[/color][/url]:
If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.So, BA, we're supposed to start proposing alternatives in Canada to single payer for fear that it may get worse? I don't think so. We've had single-payer universal care for basic medical procedures (plus many other social programs undreamed of in the U.S.) for more than 40 years without U.S. dinosaurism stopping us. We don't need to support Obama's plans in the U.S. We need to protect and expand our own gains in Canada.
Thanks for your usual degree of just making shit up that babblers didn't actually say.
I was not passing judgement positive or otherwise on the Obama plan. What I was pointing out that even that tentative step, if it fails, will invariably spill over into Canada. You need only to recall what happened in the aftermath of another tentative step towards healthcare reform during the Clinton years.
While the Obama plan is a vast improvement on the current American system - it would never satisfy me or likely the vast majority of Canadians. That however, is irrelevant to what is currently going on in the undermining of the Canadian system that is currently occuring by the same forces that want to profit from illness here.
During at least one BC election, Ralph Nader was hired by the nurses union in BC to come and talk to BCers about protecting our precious health care system in Canada, and to counter the right wing BS being told by the BC Liberals who wanted to privatise health care.
And all Layton was doing on yuotube was countering the BS that was being spewed out about Canada's health care by the right wing insurance lobbyists in the USA. Jack came across as a very strong defender of Canada's health care system. And bonus, Layton was picked up by Bloombery News who did a story on the NDP probably not supporting Harper in the Fall, jamming the Liberals once again into a corner, which became the number one federal political issue over the weekend. All in all, a pretty good weekend for the NDP.
Thanks for your usual degree of just making shit up that babblers didn't actually say.
Why not practise avoiding personal slurs?
I was not passing judgement positive or otherwise on the Obama plan. What I was pointing out that even that tentative step, if it fails, will invariably spill over into Canada. You need only to recall what happened in the aftermath of another tentative step towards healthcare reform during the Clinton years.
You've said this before and cited no evidence whatsoever for any link between the two phenomena.
Here's my prediction: Obama pushes through some pseudo-reform, which leaves private insurance companies and HMOs and their mega-profits intact. Meanwhile, Jack Layton has connected himself at the hip with Obama's "reforms". Will that make it easier or harder for us to resist the prophets of privatization, who will now point to the U.S. system as offering "choice" and having the blessing of Obama (and, guilt by association, Layton)?
As I said, Sineed, we should pay attention to Canada. Thanks for reinforcing my point.
Public health care has been under attack since its inception (and before; the fee-for-service way doctors are compensated, which results in the paradoxical situation where doctors are private practitioners in a public system, was a compromise designed to get them on board). Both the former and present head of the Canadian Medical Association spoke out in favour of a greater role for the private sector in publically-provided health care. And there's the ongoing rhetoric on both sides of the border in favour of "choice" in medicine; that Canadians are denied the "right" to opt out of the private system in order to get private health care (I counter this by saying they aren't denied anything; if they like, they can go to the US and spend too much on health care, or go to China and buy the kidney of an executed political prisoner. People with money can do whatever they like.)
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/08/20/cma-president.html
A story on the CMA heads and their support for privatization.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_12_29/ai_n14839629/
The story, "Quebec court strikes down private health care law," a greater threat to our system, IMV.
As for Obama's proposal being "vastly better" than what exists now, Stockholm, so what? If adopted, it would still be the most regressive and individual-wealth-based system in the West. Sort of like freeing half the convicts on death row - it's vastly better, but it's still a failure of abolition.
True...but with all the highly-financed, politically powerful opposition to single-payer in the US, it'd be impossible to get there all at once. They'd have to take baby steps.
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Sineed, I don't know if you cross-posted with me. What do you think of the danger posed by Layton's connecting himself with Obama's private-insurance-based reform? Will he be able to credibly say: "Oh, this is good for the U.S., but we'll never accept anything remotely like this for Canada!"?
All, or nothing, is such nonsensical thinking.
Sineeds point is quite correct.
"Better than nothing" is such desperate defeatist thinking.
There, now we're even!
But to get back to the discussion. I know this seems very heartless, but I don't care all that much about the health care system in the U.S. I certainly care more about health care in developing countries, where we share responsibility for having kept people poor and exploited.
What does worry me is Jack Layton being seen to support Obama's reforms, without having the tiniest clue as to how they will turn out. Yes, it's good for Jack to defend and champion the Canadian system (as long as he remembers that it needs lots of improvement). But Obama's system will be firmly grounded on a multiplicity of private insurance plans, as it is today, along with some minimum standards. Obama has proclaimed "CHOICE" to be the sacred right of all. If Jack gets connected with that mantra, will this help or hurt the struggle against two-tier health care in this country?
Sineed, I don't know if you cross-posted with me. What do you think of the danger posed by Layton's connecting himself with Obama's private-insurance-based reform? Will he be able to credibly say: "Oh, this is good for the U.S., but we'll never accept anything remotely like this for Canada!"?
I'm not sure Jack's posing a danger other than to his own political career; he needs to take a stronger, less equivocal stance in favour of our single-payer system. I wasn't so impressed with his appearance on MSNBC; he didn't seem all that well-informed. There are many powerful arguments to be made in favour of our system, and he didn't make them. He needs to say that whatever reforms Obama makes are steps on the way to a single-payer system and not get caught up in American politics.
Jack doesn't need to back away from confrontation with Americans - why is he?
Thanks Sineed, I'm in full agreement with that.
New Democrat MP stands up for Canadian health care
Thu 09 Jul 2009
Despite U.S. attacks on Canada’s health care system, Minister is mum: Wasylycia-Leis
WINNIPEG – Today, New Democrat health critic Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North) sent a letter to the Minister of Health regarding the misrepresentation of Canada’s public health care system in the U.S.
“Paid ads on American TV and clips on YouTube are factually incorrect,” said Wasylycia-Leis. “They claim Canadians have a low-quality health care system and that is not true. The Minister needs to step in and stop this anti-Canadian propaganda.”
July 9, 2009
Hon. Leona Aglukkaq
Minister of HealthDear Minister,
I am writing out of concern about the egregious misrepresentations of Canada and our public health system in the debate over the future of health care in the United States. Paid ads and materials appearing on YouTube have reportedly contained factual errors, false claims that Canadians are receiving low-quality health care and assertions that our public health care system is vastly unpopular.
I am calling on you to take action to counter these reprehensible and misleading representations of our nation by presenting an accurate reflection of the benefits and popularity of Canada’s public health care system to the American public and decision-makers. Whether appearing before legislative bodies or undertaking campaigns in popular media, it is incumbent on our federal government to promote and defend our national achievements and ensure that decisions critical to the health and well-being of others are based on sound, accurate information.
I urge you to act quickly before these negative, fundamentally anti-Canadian messages gain a stronger foothold in the American public consciousness and unduly influence decisions not only about health care but about tourism, investment and other considerations.
Looking forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Judy Wasylycia-Leis, MP
New Democrat Health Critichttp://www.ndp.ca/press/new-democrat-mp-stands-up-for-canadian-health-care
"Tourism"?
"Investment"?
Asking Harpokons to get involved in the U.S. debate over health care?
Brilliant.
Yeah, it was pretty good up til there, then I reached for the Gravol.
I agree with BA. If unionist is so worried about our system then lets change the most potent challenge to it, the US lobby. If the US moves to any system more like our it will reduce the pressure here. You can point to them and say "Even the americans have seen there is a better approach to healthcare than simply private insurers." Stop being obtuse as usual, then crying that someone is insulting you when they aren't.
Short sighted thinking or no friends of Canadians, hard to decide which.
Perhaps a whack load of both.
Stop being obtuse as usual, then crying that someone is insulting you when they aren't.
Funny - a gratuitous insult (as usual), followed by a denial that anyone is insulting me.
What I care more is about this logic that the health care debate in the U.S. poses a threat to the Canadian health care system.
I believe the threat to the Canadian health care system comes from its own ambiguous defenders. The way to protect our system is by aggression - pushing forward relentlessly with new social programs, pharmacare, dental care, home care, elder care, etc. Then no one will listen to the right-wing prophets of doom.
But I'm still waiting for evidence that the U.S. insurance lobby mounted some privatization push in Canada after Clinton's betrayal, and that it will be repeated after Obama's capitulation. I'm no expert, but BA's post is the first time I had ever heard such a thesis. See if you can respond to my question without insults - it will strengthen your argument.
"What do you think of the danger posed by Layton's connecting himself with Obama's private-insurance-based reform?"
I haven't seen Layton comment (either in support or in opposition) on any of the details of any of the various health care reform plans working their way through congress. All he is doing is defending what we have in Canada in the face of attacks from the extreme right in the US that is telling blatant lies about Canada in an attempt to shoot down what is being proposed and speaking out in the US about the virtues of having a universal health care system in Canada.
Its not up to Canadian politicians to interfere in the nitty-gritty of domestic political debate in the US - but when lies are being told about the Canadian experience - then I expect Canadian politicians to set the record straight. Similarly, when there is debate about getting rid of "don't ask, don't tell" in the US, I would welcome Peter McKay telling American audiences that gays and lesbians serve openly in the Canadian military and that it has not been a problems.
Do the HMOs rule or do the people?
What 1994 Can Tell Democrats on Health Care
Bill Kristol, a powerhouse policy guru for Republicans, often has a tin ear for politics. A week before the presidential election last year he predicted John McCain would "win huge." In May, he said President Barack Obama had decided to nominate Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan to the Supreme Court, and he's been a cheerleader for Sarah Palin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27iht-letter.html?hpw
Mr. Kristol was prescient, however, 16 years ago in advising Republicans that defeating President Bill Clinton's health care overhaul would be devastating for the Democrats. He's making the same case today, imploring Republicans to "go for the kill" on the Obama health care initiative.
He's right again. A defeat would be a killer for Democrats. The trademark of Mr. Obama's first year in office would be failure; the reputations of the president and his celebrated White House staff would be decimated.
Less evident, though equally true, it would almost certainly cost congressional Democrats seats in elections next year, striking especially hard at some of the same centrist Blue Dogs who are resisting a health care bill.
meanwhile, the BCNDP are whistle blowing on BC Liberal health care gutting in the Fraser Valley, I guess they figure those are safe seats.