Other countries series: O Canada…

Canada’s a big country with a culture very similar to our own. It has weather that we understand. And it’s got a decent system in place to accept immigrants (you can do a self-test online, for Pete’s sake). I now confess to you, dear reader, that I have actively looked into emigrating to our neighborly country to the north. Fact is, I’m an adjunct instructor at a university (SUNY) having spent a couple decades teaching at another university (SU). I was shocked to learn that SU employs over 700 adjunct instructors, most of whom never had and don’t have a hope of ever getting their own affordable health insurance coverage through the university.

This is the situation anywhere you go in the US: people with master’s and doctoral degrees working two or three part-time jobs who nevertheless cannot get health insurance. I am not the only person, with or without degrees, who has considered becoming a refugee of the United States’ health care “system.”

And no, the little lady cannot rely on hubby’s health insurance. He’s a freelancer… working online for Canadian companies. But we still live here, in Eastwood, NY, because we love it. For as long as our health holds out.

Historically, people with the means to do so move to wherever they feel life will be better for them. That’s why we moved to Eastwood. But until we and some 46 million other Americans have the same right to health care as those who are covered (albeit paying outrageous premiums for coverage that doesn’t always actually pay), we will continue to consider that move up the Black River and over the St. Lawrence.

The loss of one annoying blogger would not affect Syracuse, much less the USA, very much. But the current efforts to put universal coverage in place are making a good number of thinking people think carefully about the what-ifs… what if after all these years, all this worry, and all this effort we still are relegated to second-class citizenship because we’ve been downsized or we simply love teaching university students?

More immediately, when a good proportion of any neighborhood has little or no access to comprehensive health care (a visit to the ER is not comprehensive), then a great deal of the potential of that neighborhood cannot be realized. There’s no need for this. Despite the huge costs of health care, the US does not stack up well against many other countries in terms of the health and longevity of its citizens.

A friend sent me the following, and I think it’s well worth the read. Any system that excludes a huge segment of its population from basic needs is inherently unstable, not to mention unjust. Something will have to give, and that’s not good for any neighborhood.

I’m so tired of the mis-information and lack of information that flies around these days….  and when I heard a colleague say yesterday that “the average waiting time in Canadian emergency rooms is 23 hours”  I finally started digging around for better data.  One of the better links I found is actually somehat antecdotal but it’s still worth reading and sharing…

Public health care: Canadian perspective on myths and reality