Barbarians Invading: Want to understand Canadian healthcare? Go to the movies!

Tech Central Station ^ | January 2, 2004 | John R. Graham

[quidnunc]

The Barbarian Invasions is an impressive Canadian film. (Yes, we do make them). The movie won two awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival: Best Screenplay and Best Actress, and is currently playing in a number of US cities. It is the story of a man dying of a terminal disease who renews his relationships with his friends and family, especially his adult son. Much of the action takes place in a hospital in Montreal, Quebec, where director and screenwriter Denys Arcand dissects the Canadian health care system.

(I write this review as the province of Quebec recovers from a streak of violence by health workers' unions. The Quebec government recently announced policies to increase the contracting out of some services to private providers, which obviously attacks those unions' interests. Rioters vandalized a children's hospital where the Premier made a speech, and invaded politicians' offices, hurling pig manure.)

The film opens with a nun struggling down the corridor of a crowded ward to administer Holy Communion: patients, health professionals, even electricians, are tripping over each other, packed into an environment of general confusion. And yet, there is another floor of the hospital that is completely closed. Why? We learn from the manager that this is due to a government directive. (Although I'm in another province on the other side of the country from Montreal, I know the feeling: our Vancouver General Hospital has an entire cancer pavilion that sat empty for a decade!)

-snip-

[quidnunc]

Quote:

Then, because there is virtually no access to PET scans in Canada, the son takes his father to Vermont to get one. One of the son's friends in Baltimore (one of many Canadian doctors who have emigrated to the US) examines the scan and informs him that his father will have a much better chance in Baltimore than Montreal. Remarkably, the father wants nothing to do with it: "I voted for socialized health care, and I'm prepared to suffer the consequences!" he proclaims.

With this line, the father speaks for too many Canadians, who often wrap their national identity up in nationalized health care. For this reason, Canadian politicians have not had the courage to give Canadians more health freedom. However, the pain and inhumanity caused by the Canadian health care system are starting to make even the most nationalistic of us reconsider the amount of control over health services that we've ceded to our governments.

'Nuff said!

[Taliesan]

This can't be true. According to Hillary ("smartest woman in the world") Clinton, there is so much waste and obscene profiting in the US system that if we went to a single payer system we could still have all the health care we want, for free, with all the efficiency we've come to expect from the government, and still get change back from our dollar.

[FormerLib]

This deserves a bump!

[MarkeyD]

So has this been posted over at DU yet?

[quidnunc]

MarkeyD wrote: So has this been posted over at DU yet?

I have no idea.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Judging by what I've read, the World's Smartest Woman's health care package included formation of a committee to decide just how much health care you could get. So much for all the health care you needed...

[secretagent]

The Canndians might have blessing in disguise, since the wretched system might keep them out doctor's clutches longer.

[GOP_Proud]

BUMP

[Servant of the 9]

Canuckistan PING!

So9

[fakecanuck]

Canadians may have to wait longer in line for a CAT scan, but at least they won't have to sell their first born to do it. It's a system which is accessible to every citizen, with or without money in the bank.

[Servant of the 9]

Canadians may have to wait longer in line for a CAT scan, but at least they won't have to sell their first born to do it. It's a system which is accessible to every citizen, with or without money in the bank.

Just how much good does free cancer care do you when it takes so long to be diagnosed and scheduled for surgery, that it becomes terminal?

What Canada provides is equally bad treatment for all but the super rich
What the US provides is the best health care in the world at an affordable though steep price for all but the marginal.

In both countries, you get exactly what you pay for.

So9

[Sergio]

I remember watching a Canadian comic on TV, don't remember his name, but his opening line went something like this.

"I'm from Canada, where a pack of smokes is $7, but a heart transplant is free, so smoke 'em if you got 'em."

Funny stuff.

Best Regards

Sergio

[kanawa]

Get your hand out of my pocket and let me buy my own insurance.

Hard-cases can go to charity.

[muleskinner]

The only part government should play is to stop lawyers from filing frivolous malpractice suites. Insurance companies pay them off, then raise rates on everyone.

Leaving a sponge in during an operation is one thing, but saying it's the doctors fault your kid has birth defects is another.

[BIGZ]

The argument is for socialized health care because all the other countries have it, The majority of other countries have a loser pays legal system but you don see the layers or the liberal advocating this type sensible system.

Loser pays would go a long way to stop high medical costs.

Lawyers are proof that homosexual relationships beget children.

[lepton]

It's a system which is accessible to every citizen, with or without money in the bank.

Such as it is...and except when it's closed.

[Squawk 8888]

It's a system which is accessible to every citizen, with or without money in the bank.

But more accessible to the well-connected. When the federal health minister needed prostate surgery he waited two days, for the rest of us plebes the wait is three to four months.

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Barbarians Invading - John R. Graham

The Barbarian Invasions is an impressive Canadian film. (Yes, we do make them). The movie won two awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival: Best Screenplay and Best Actress, and is currently playing in a number of US cities. It is the story of a man dying of a terminal disease who renews his relationships with his friends and family, especially his adult son. Much of the action takes place in a hospital in Montreal, Quebec, where director and screenwriter Denys Arcand dissects the Canadian health care system.

(I write this review as the province of Quebec recovers from a streak of violence by health workers' unions. The Quebec government recently announced policies to increase the contracting out of some services to private providers, which obviously attacks those unions' interests. Rioters vandalized a children's hospital where the Premier made a speech, and invaded politicians' offices, hurling pig manure.)

The film opens with a nun struggling down the corridor of a crowded ward to administer Holy Communion: patients, health professionals, even electricians, are tripping over each other, packed into an environment of general confusion. And yet, there is another floor of the hospital that is completely closed. Why? We learn from the manager that this is due to a government directive. (Although I'm in another province on the other side of the country from Montreal, I know the feeling: our Vancouver General Hospital has an entire cancer pavilion that sat empty for a decade!)

The dying man's son is a successful investment banker in London. He's the kind of guy who can awriggle around anything. (He reminded me of Komarovsky, the character played by Rod Steiger in Doctor Zhivago: a wealthy businessman in Tsarist Russia with only contempt for the revolutionaries, he winds up a commissar after the dust settles.)

First, he wrangles his way into the hospital's management offices without a pass and corners the manager, who is completely isolated from the chaos outside. He offers her a bribe to get his father moved out of the zoo and into a private space on the empty floor. She quietly takes the bribe, but points out that she can do nothing without the hospital employees' union. The son pays off the union boss to prepare a private room on the empty floor. Painters, carpenters, and other workers quickly make it up.

Then, because there is virtually no access to PET scans in Canada, the son takes his father to Vermont to get one. One of the son's friends in Baltimore (one of many Canadian doctors who have emigrated to the US) examines the scan and informs him that his father will have a much better chance in Baltimore than Montreal. Remarkably, the father wants nothing to do with it: "I voted for socialized health care, and I'm prepared to suffer the consequences!" he proclaims.

With this line, the father speaks for too many Canadians, who often wrap their national identity up in nationalized health care. For this reason, Canadian politicians have not had the courage to give Canadians more health freedom. However, the pain and inhumanity caused by the Canadian health care system are starting to make even the most nationalistic of us reconsider the amount of control over health services that we've ceded to our governments.

This movie tells us a lot about the consequences of government monopoly health care. The hospitals are poorly managed, the doctors and nurses confused, the unions who really run the show thuggish, the patients all but ignored. The film is sparking a debate in Canada about the role of the state in health care. Any American who thinks that health care in the United States would be improved by implementing a single-payer system would learn much from it too.

____________________________________

This article is spot-on!! Can't wait to rent this movie myself!! -- worthy of a full posting....

- ConservativeStLouisGuy

[Nanodik]

Your name says it all....

I think it is hard for Americans to imagine how the health care system is slowly falling apart up there. There will be a day of reckoning for Canada and I feel for my relatives who are still up there...

[Canadian Outrage]

I don't think Quebec is exactly the right example to use since they have their very "own" health care system. The rest of the Provinces are Provincially and Federally regulated but NOT Quebec. In any event, I that we in B.C. pay health care premiums. There are only two Provinces in Canada that pay premiums and B.C. is one of them. For David and I it is $100.00 a month. I don't mind at all and I am all for two tiering the system. A Private MRI clinic just got up and running this past summer here in Kelowna. It started in Alberta where they started allowing "privately owned" clinics to spring up thereby taking some of the pressure off of the "system". And why not? I trained as an RN at the Vancouver General Hospital. It WAS a good hospital. Of course in those days there was no such thing as "healthcare unions". That has been one of the major things to cause the system to go to ratcrap!!