This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Learning from Canada
Nov
12
2008
I’m glad I don’t live in Canada. The health care is free, which means that it is worthless. Patients leaving the country, doctors leaving the country. The only people left will be the government administrators.
And the speech is not free, which means it is costly. If you say something in Canada and someone complains about you, you could face legal fees of tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself. And the complainer? No fees. In fact, the government, meaning the taxpayer, pays the legal fees of the complainer. How stacked is that deck?
At least they have hockey. Don Cherry can still say what he wants. And CBC’s coverage of the Olympics is usually better than what’s offered in the US.
It’s nice of Canada to try some things so that we in the US don’t have to make the same mistakes. Anytime someone proposes changes here in the US, we can just look at how it worked in Canada. It’s one thing to be advanced – if you’re the first one down the right path. But if you’re the first one down a bad path, that’s not a good thing. How do you know it’s a bad path? If a bunch of other people are coming back out of it saying it’s bad, that’s usually a decent indicator.
I hope people in America learn the right lessons from others’ mistakes.
Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians, our heart is opened wide.
2 Corinthians 6:11
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 11:56 pm and has been carefully placed in the Current Events category.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Anytime people talk about universal health care I think of Canada and my little girl. We are so blessed to have an awesome cardiologist for her who is willing to get her the best care, and if/when she needs another surgery, he’ll get her to the best surgeon. I can only imagine what would happen to her if our health care was like Canada’s.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Anytime people talk about universal health care I think of how much “free” services really cost. The more something is covered by someone else, the more the prices rise; if people think health care is expensive now, I think they’ll be surprised by how much it costs when it’s free.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Complaining about the NHS is Britain’s national past-time. They can’t get it right, and they’re even small and relatively homogeneous.
I think our historical 1st Amendment roots will keep us from going the route of Canada regarding free speech issues; from my limited knowledge, the US is one of the most liberal countries regarding free speech rights, and doesn’t seem inclined to change.
But on health care, I think your hope might disappoint. It seems the media have been successful on making health care a national “crisis”, which means the politicians must get involved. I think there are enough people out there who don’t really appreciate what “free” health care entails – people of voting age – that politicians will exploit those needy people. I think it’s a close race whether we’ll have some sort of national health care system or college football playoffs first: both bad ideas and products of people unable to see forward or backward more than a day.
On a related note, I happened to catch some of a Pres. Elect Obama speech on CNN, just for a minute. A couple of people in the crowd behind him were holding signs with his slogans on them: “Change We Need”. But the camera angle cut off the top part of the signs. So the image was Obama, surrounded by people with signs saying, “We Need”. Unfortunately, the sentiment of “government, save us” seems popular right now, and the incoming administration, also unfortunately, seems eager to act as savior.