Dear Liberal Friends

Tell me how ObamaCare is gonna be different here, and if the words "hope" or "change" escape your lips, I'm liable to slap you.



If greed gets me better care than this, I'll take greed, thanks.

UPDATED: I thought this video was more entertaining than anything. I shouldn't have been so snide about it, I suppose, but I think the screen shot sort of captures the un-seriousness of it. Been getting some feedback from people who think I'm thinking this is a definitive video proving how bad Canadian health care is. I think of this as a sort of Michael Moore-ish piece for our side, much less than an academic or even serious attack on universal health care.

This, I think, is much more effective in demonstrating the inefficiencies of our neighbors to the Great White North:

Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.

The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.

If you want a movie that more seriously addresses the problems with both the Canadian and, to a lesser extent, American health care systems, I can't recommend this movie enough. It's a great story about life, family, and death.

Immunized or Incarcerated

Out of Prince George's County, Maryland:

The parents of more than 2,300 Prince George's County students who failed to get needed vaccinations could face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail if their children do not meet the state's immunization requirements, county officials said yesterday.

While I believe that children should be immunized against communicable diseases, this is a gross violation of parental rights and, potentially, the 1st Amendment. If any of the students are Christian Scientists --who believe that prayer is the only legitimate remedy to disease -- then forced medical care will be in blatant violation of the Free Exercise clause. The First Amendment does not just protect behaviors that we don't find absurd and dangerous.

There is an argument that this is a "public health issue" but -- as is most often the case -- this is a private health issue. Most kids will be immunized, and thus unaffected by the choices of others.

The best argument for forcing this is the child's rights (viz. health) versus the parent's rights (autonomous decisions relating to their own children). Unless the child expresses desire -- against the will of the parents -- for immunization, the parents have the right to medically treat their child how they see fit.

If this were a case of neglect, that would be one issue, but "improper" lack of precaution does not qualify as neglect. Such interpretation would open up a Pandora's Box of "unreasonable" parenting decisions that may run counter to conventional wisdom.

Leave the parents alone.

UPDATE: (2013) I've noticed this post has, for some reason, gotten a few views recently. I stand by the First Amendment problems and that incarceration is an inappropriate punishment, but I've realized since I wrote this regarding the whole "private" versus "public" issue, that people who have weakened immune systems--whether via HIV, Lupus, old age, or whatever--can be dramatically, even fatally, affected by these decisions. It's not in my bailiwick to say what should be done, but I don't believe incarceration is really the best answer.

Generally speaking, the threshold for which we put our fellow human beings in cages should be much higher than it is today. -jpb