First a few words from one Canada's Greatest Politician and Humanitarian Tommy Douglas who first introduced Comprehensive Medicare into Canada which is one of the programs which most Canadians are proud of:(see Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! below)
Tommy Douglas on Future of Medicare (1983)
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
anti-Obama Republicans and their Media Shills advocate insurrection over Health Care Reform-
“With more than eight in 10 Canadians supporting public solutions to make public health care stronger, there is compelling evidence that Canadians across all demographics would prefer a public over a for-profit health-care system,” said Nik Nanos, president of Nanos Research" Globe and Mail
"An Estimated 200,000 People Die From Medical Errors and Hospital-Acquired Infections" Each Year" Hearst National Investigation
Today's Menu
86% of Canadians support the present Government funded Health care system & reject adopting an American style model of private health care
Tommy Douglas and Canadian Medicare-Amy Goodman
President Obama debunks "Death Panels" & notes the provision that's been deliberately portrayed as Death Panels was sponsored by a Republican Member.
Obama: Its gotten spun in to Death Panels I am not in favor of that
August 11, 2009, President Barack Obama a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H
Protester argues everyone should carry a loaded gun at public events
Chris Matthews Unloads On Protester Who Carried Gun To Obama Event
Canadian Medical Association trying to spread misinformation using questionable polling data to undermine support for the government run health care .
"Canadians Back ‘Public Solutions' to Improve Care, Poll Finds" by André Picard at Globe and Mail, Canada, Aug. 12,2009
An overwhelming 86 per cent of Canadians favour “public solutions” for bolstering medicare, according to a new poll.
The survey, commissioned by the Canadian Health Coalition, is being released Wednesday as a pre-emptive strike.
That is because the Canadian Medical Association, at its coming general council meeting, plans to stage a high-profile discussion about transforming medicare, and it will release its own poll on support for privately delivered care.
Michael McBane, national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition, said he has no doubt that poll will show strong support for “privatization schemes” but the “language used in the CMA survey was so vague and misleading that its results cannot possible be interpreted as support for more for-profit medicine.”
He said that the outgoing CMA president, Robert Ouellet, operates private medical imaging clinics and is promoting a personal agenda that is out of step with Canadian values.
“Canadians have told us they want to keep our health-care system public and to improve it with made-in-Canada solutions. They also have told us they flat-out reject Dr. Ouellet's proposal to provide us with American-style two-tier medicine,” he said.
In fact, Dr. Ouellet has explicitly rejected a U.S.-style system. In a recent speech launching a new campaign entitled Time To Transform Healthcare, he said: “The U.S. is a very poor performer. Why look to a system that ranks below ours for lessons?”
Rather, Dr. Ouellet has actively promoted European-style health care, with a mix of private and publicly delivered care. He is particularly keen on “activity-based funding,” in which hospitals would receive funding based on the number of patients they treat and their efficiency. Currently, hospitals receive block funding.
...Those polled were asked the following question: “Thinking about the future of Canada's public health-care system, would you support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or oppose public solutions to make our public health care stronger?”
A total of 86.2 per cent of respondents said they support or somewhat support public solutions, while 8.2 per cent said they oppose or somewhat oppose the approach. The balance, 5.7 per cent, said they were unsure.
“With more than eight in 10 Canadians supporting public solutions to make public health care stronger, there is compelling evidence that Canadians across all demographics would prefer a public over a for-profit health-care system,” said Nik Nanos, president of Nanos Research.
A recent report by Health Canada, entitled Healthy Canadians – A Federal Report on Comparable Health Indicators 2008, found that 85.2 per cent of Canadians were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with health-care services overall. That level was unchanged from 2005, the last time the survey was conducted.
"Health Care Reform Needs an Action Hero" by Amy Goodman August 12, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Imagine the scene. America 2009. Eighteen thousand people have died in one year, an average of almost 50 a day. Who’s taking them out? What’s killing them?
To investigate, President Barack Obama might be tempted to call on Jack Bauer, the fictional rogue intelligence agent from the hit TV series “24,” who invariably employs torture and a host of other illegal tactics to help the president fight terrorism. But terrorism is not the culprit here:
It’s lack of adequate health care. So maybe the president’s solution isn’t Jack Bauer, but rather the actor who plays him.
The star of “24” is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections to health care reform—in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health care system. As a youth, Tommy Douglas almost lost his ailing leg. His family could not afford treatment, but a doctor treated him for free, provided his medical students could observe. As an adult, Douglas saw the impact of widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression. Trained as a minister, he had a popular oratorical style.
He moved into politics, joining the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party. After several years in Parliament, he led the CCF’s decisive victory in the province of Saskatchewan, ushering in the first social democratic government in North America.
Douglas became premier of Saskatchewan, and pioneered a number of progressive policies there, including the expansion of public utilities, unionization and public auto insurance. But Douglas’ biggest battle, for which he is best remembered, is the creation of universal health insurance, called Medicare. It passed in Saskatchewan in 1962, guaranteeing hospital care for all residents. Doctors there staged a 23-day strike, supported by the U.S.-based American Medical Association. Despite industry opposition, the Saskatchewan Medicare program was so successful and popular that it was adopted throughout Canada. While Tommy Douglas was fighting for health insurance in Canada, a similar battle was raging in the U.S., resulting in the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, giving guaranteed, single-payer health care to senior citizens and the poor.
Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck and insurance-industry-funded groups are encouraging people to disrupt town hall meetings with members of Congress. A number of the confrontations have become violent, or at least threatening. Outside President Obama’s Portsmouth, N.H., event, a protester with a pistol strapped to his thigh drew further attention with a sign that read, “It is time to water the tree of Liberty.” Thomas Jefferson’s complete quote, not included on the sign, continues, “... with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” Limbaugh says “24” is one of his favorite shows. He has even visited the set. Rush should learn from the real-life actor who plays his hero, Jack. Limbaugh and his cohorts may find truth not as satisfying as fiction.
In 2004, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. poll named Tommy Douglas “The Greatest Canadian.” At a protest in 2000 against efforts to roll back the Medicare system in the province of Alberta, Kiefer Sutherland defended Canada’s public, single-payer system:
“Private health care does not work. America is trying to change their system. It’s too expensive to get comprehensive medical care in the U.S. Why on earth are we going to follow their system here? I consider it a humanitarian issue. This is an issue about what is right and wrong, what is decent and what is not.”
Maybe Jack Bauer can save the day.
Private Medical Health Care Industry is flawed and cannot be trusted to improve their services because their main concern is the bottom line- Americans need to wake up and not blindly accept the lies and misinformation of the Medical Industry and its Republican backers and their well payed Media Hucksters & Lobbyists and Public Relations firms.
"HEARST NATIONAL INVESTIGATION FINDS AMERICANS ARE CONTINUING TO DIE IN STAGGERING NUMBERS FROM PREVENTABLE MEDICAL INJURIES"
An Estimated 200,000 People Die From Medical Errors and Hospital-Acquired Infections Each Year
INVESTIGATION UTILIZES THE REPORTING RESOURCES OF HEARST NEWSPAPER, TELEVISION AND WEB PROPERTIES
New York, August 9, 2009 – An estimated 200,000 Americans will die needlessly from preventable medical mistakes and hospital infections this year, according to “Dead By Mistake,” a wide-ranging Hearst national investigation, which began reporting the findings today [www.deadbymistake.com/]. Despite an authoritative federal report 10 years ago that laid out the scope of the problem and urged the federal and state governments and the medical community to take clear and tangible steps to reduce the number of fatal medical errors,a staggering 98,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors each year and just as many from hospital-acquired infections.
“Dead By Mistake” is the result of an investigation conducted by Hearst newspaper and television journalists.
Ten years ago, the highly-publicized federal report, “To Err Is Human,” highlighted the alarming death toll from preventable medical injuries and called on the medical community to cut it in half—in five years. Its authors and patient safety advocates believed that its release would spur a revolution in patient safety. But Hearst’s “Dead By Mistake” reveals that the federal government and most states have made little or no progress in improving patient safety through accountability mechanisms or other measures. According to the Hearst investigation, special interests worked to ensure that the key recommendations in the report—most notably a mandatory national reporting system for medical errors—were never implemented.
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"Handguns and Health Care Reform" by josh Horowitz, Huffington Post, August,11,2009
...Then, on August 7, an anti-health care reform protester in New Mexico named Scott Oskay Tweeted to his hundreds of followers to bring their licensed concealed handguns to town hall meetings, adding, "If ACORN/SEIU attends these townhalls for disruption, stop being peaceful, and hurt them. Badly." The following day, it was reported that several Tea Partiers brought handguns into a town hall organized by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) in Memphis, Tennessee. Additionally, an attendee at a meet and greet with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in a supermarket dropped a handgun, leading her staff to call the police. Most recently, a man was filmed openly carrying a handgun outside of President Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire. He held a sign that read, "IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!" a reference to the following Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Exhortations to the right wing base to take armed political action against the Obama administration are far from idle talk--but instead reflect a deeply developed ideology that has been actively promoted by the National Rifle Association and other gun lobby groups for the past 30 years. It holds that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to commit acts of violence against our government should it lapse into "tyranny," effectively making firearms "the tools of political dissent." Or as NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre put it at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, "The guys with the guns make the rules."
The problem is that there are already a substantial number of well-armed Americans who believe our democratically-elected government has become oppressive. Indeed, last week Tea Partiers at a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida, heckled Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) with repeated chants of "Tyranny!" Far from furthering democracy, however, these individuals have made important debate impossible, thereby limiting the political rights of all those who disagree with them.
With tensions escalating at town halls across the country, the overwhelming majority of Americans who wish to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights must speak out against the violent, insurrectionist philosophy that has corrupted the Second Amendment.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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