You’ll Be Wrapped Around My Finger
“I will turn your face to alabaster; when you find your servant is your master.”
When Sting wrote those words back in the 80s, I bet he didn’t have Canada’s health care system in mind. And yet, these many years later, it could very well be used as our health care theme song.
And there’s a twist. The Canadian version of the song has a surprising role reversal. Playing the role of the master is: the health care system. And, playing the role of the servant is: me, you and all other middle class Canadians. Yep it’s the faces of Canadians that have turned to alabaster, after finding out their health care Servant has become their Master.
Hmm, just a minute. “Servant” may not be a strong enough word to describe Canadians’ relationship with their health care system. Rather, it’s more like “slave”. After all, like slaves, we Canadians are not permitted to obtain any medical treatments except what is provided under the whip of our communistic state health-care master.
The whole situation is completely and utterly perverse.
Think about it. Canadian doctors routinely turn away new patients because they have too many patients already. Statistics Canada reports that many Canadians have no family doctor. Here in Canada, it is the doctors who are in demand, not the patients. Tell me, what service provider actually tells customers to go away? What business has clients competing for its services rather than the other way around?
A while back, I read an article in the newspaper about a Canadian doctor who was telling all his smoking patients that he would not be their doctor anymore. It was his way of sending a message to them about their smoking, I guess. Well, the message was received alright – and it was a message saying that he was the master and his smoking patients were his servants – excuse me, slaves – to be disposed of at his discretion, with, apparently, no adverse affects on him or his income. Such is the reprehensible world of Canadian communist medicine. A world where doctors hold all the cards and citizens beg to get into the game.
Here in Canada there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for surgery at any given moment. Some wait months, some wait years. Some die or get irreversibly worse waiting in the queue. Such is your lot in life when you are a slave and have no control over your medical destiny except what little is allowed you by your master.
We supposedly live in a free and democratic society. At least that’s what we are told. Not so free, though, when it comes to seeking our own medical treatment. This has always puzzled me. How did Canadians become so stupid and naive – so narrow mindedly socialist – so as to buy this damaged bill of goods? We walk around with our chests pumped up and our noses in the air, relishing the sensitivity and compassion we show to our poorest people, all of whom have complete medical coverage. Unfortunately, in providing them with this coverage, we haven’t raised them up to the level a middle class person should receive. We’ve dragged the middle class down to the same level of service a poor person would receive. (Making everyone equally miserable is what socialism does best, or didn’t you get the Memo?)
Yep, the middle class can, apparently, just go to hell and wait months for cancer treatment and heart surgery; just as long as the poor can go to our hospital emergency rooms with the sniffles and have their treatment paid for by the terminally sick and dying middle class through their taxes. It is so uplifting to be an enlightened socialist. Have we attained health care utopia or what? Pinch me. It’s all so perfect I must be dreaming
We are so free here in Canada. We have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. But, oddly, we have no freedom of health – arguably the only freedom where life literally hangs in the balance.
We are free alright. Free to lie for days on stretchers in hospital corridors. Free to wait months for cancer treatment. Free to live in pain and become hopelessly addicted to opioids. Free to lick the boots of our almighty health care master while we die like dogs waiting for permission to be treated. Ahhhhh, It’s good to be a free Canadian.
Look, it is one thing to want to give everyone, especially those who cannot afford it, adequate health care. We all want to do that. But, it is another thing entirely to pass laws making it illegal for anyone to seek their own treatment when the public system is failing them. It is, in fact, not just perverse, it is downright fascist.
And anyway, despite the agonized protestations of those who would deny us our freedom of health and keep us powerless and enslaved, there is really no proof that allowing additional access would destroy the public system. In fact, the opposite is true. Many enlightened nations such as Finland, Sweden and France have public health care for everyone while allowing citizens to buy additional insurance or pay for their own treatment if they desire. Please note that I used the word “allowing”. Imagine, we actually live in a world where the dying and the suffering have to be ‘allowed’ to take measures to extend their own lives. Shouldn’t such freedom simply be seen as a human right rather than a gift to be given or taken away by the state? What the hell is the matter with us? Have we become so pathetically used to crawling to government, that we need its permission to save our own lives?
When Sting wrote those words back in the 80s, I bet he didn’t have Canada’s health care system in mind. And yet, these many years later, it could very well be used as our health care theme song.
And there’s a twist. The Canadian version of the song has a surprising role reversal. Playing the role of the master is: the health care system. And, playing the role of the servant is: me, you and all other middle class Canadians. Yep it’s the faces of Canadians that have turned to alabaster, after finding out their health care Servant has become their Master.
Hmm, just a minute. “Servant” may not be a strong enough word to describe Canadians’ relationship with their health care system. Rather, it’s more like “slave”. After all, like slaves, we Canadians are not permitted to obtain any medical treatments except what is provided under the whip of our communistic state health-care master.
The whole situation is completely and utterly perverse.
Think about it. Canadian doctors routinely turn away new patients because they have too many patients already. Statistics Canada reports that many Canadians have no family doctor. Here in Canada, it is the doctors who are in demand, not the patients. Tell me, what service provider actually tells customers to go away? What business has clients competing for its services rather than the other way around?
A while back, I read an article in the newspaper about a Canadian doctor who was telling all his smoking patients that he would not be their doctor anymore. It was his way of sending a message to them about their smoking, I guess. Well, the message was received alright – and it was a message saying that he was the master and his smoking patients were his servants – excuse me, slaves – to be disposed of at his discretion, with, apparently, no adverse affects on him or his income. Such is the reprehensible world of Canadian communist medicine. A world where doctors hold all the cards and citizens beg to get into the game.
Here in Canada there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for surgery at any given moment. Some wait months, some wait years. Some die or get irreversibly worse waiting in the queue. Such is your lot in life when you are a slave and have no control over your medical destiny except what little is allowed you by your master.
We supposedly live in a free and democratic society. At least that’s what we are told. Not so free, though, when it comes to seeking our own medical treatment. This has always puzzled me. How did Canadians become so stupid and naive – so narrow mindedly socialist – so as to buy this damaged bill of goods? We walk around with our chests pumped up and our noses in the air, relishing the sensitivity and compassion we show to our poorest people, all of whom have complete medical coverage. Unfortunately, in providing them with this coverage, we haven’t raised them up to the level a middle class person should receive. We’ve dragged the middle class down to the same level of service a poor person would receive. (Making everyone equally miserable is what socialism does best, or didn’t you get the Memo?)
Yep, the middle class can, apparently, just go to hell and wait months for cancer treatment and heart surgery; just as long as the poor can go to our hospital emergency rooms with the sniffles and have their treatment paid for by the terminally sick and dying middle class through their taxes. It is so uplifting to be an enlightened socialist. Have we attained health care utopia or what? Pinch me. It’s all so perfect I must be dreaming
We are so free here in Canada. We have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. But, oddly, we have no freedom of health – arguably the only freedom where life literally hangs in the balance.
We are free alright. Free to lie for days on stretchers in hospital corridors. Free to wait months for cancer treatment. Free to live in pain and become hopelessly addicted to opioids. Free to lick the boots of our almighty health care master while we die like dogs waiting for permission to be treated. Ahhhhh, It’s good to be a free Canadian.
Look, it is one thing to want to give everyone, especially those who cannot afford it, adequate health care. We all want to do that. But, it is another thing entirely to pass laws making it illegal for anyone to seek their own treatment when the public system is failing them. It is, in fact, not just perverse, it is downright fascist.
And anyway, despite the agonized protestations of those who would deny us our freedom of health and keep us powerless and enslaved, there is really no proof that allowing additional access would destroy the public system. In fact, the opposite is true. Many enlightened nations such as Finland, Sweden and France have public health care for everyone while allowing citizens to buy additional insurance or pay for their own treatment if they desire. Please note that I used the word “allowing”. Imagine, we actually live in a world where the dying and the suffering have to be ‘allowed’ to take measures to extend their own lives. Shouldn’t such freedom simply be seen as a human right rather than a gift to be given or taken away by the state? What the hell is the matter with us? Have we become so pathetically used to crawling to government, that we need its permission to save our own lives?
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