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Barbarians Invading: Want to understand Canadian healthcare? Go to the movies!
Tech Central Station ^
| January 2, 2004
| John R. Graham
Posted on 01/02/2004 9:08:19 AM PST by 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-
(Excerpt) Read more at techcentralstation.com ...
TOPICS: Canada; Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: healthcare
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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!
1
posted on
01/02/2004 9:08:21 AM PST
by
quidnunc
To: quidnunc
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.
2
posted on
01/02/2004 9:14:56 AM PST
by
Taliesan
To: quidnunc
This deserves a bump!
3
posted on
01/02/2004 9:36:38 AM PST
by
FormerLib
(We'll fight the good fight until the very end!)
To: quidnunc
So has this been posted over at DU yet?
4
posted on
01/02/2004 9:42:41 AM PST
by
MarkeyD
(Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.)
To: MarkeyD
MarkeyD wrote:
So has this been posted over at DU yet?I have no idea.
5
posted on
01/02/2004 9:46:59 AM PST
by
quidnunc
(Omnis Gaul delenda est)
To: Taliesan
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...
6
posted on
01/02/2004 9:50:47 AM PST
by
Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(Show me the people with the land, the money, and the guns, and I'll show you the people in charge.)
To: quidnunc
The Canndians might have blessing in disguise, since the wretched system might keep them out doctor's clutches longer.
To: secretagent
BUMP
8
posted on
01/02/2004 10:35:59 AM PST
by
GOP_Proud
(Those who preach tolerance seem to have the least for my views.)
To: Canadian Outrage
To: 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.
To: 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. 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
To: quidnunc
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
12
posted on
01/02/2004 12:08:18 PM PST
by
Sergio
(If a tree fell on a mime in the forest, would he make a sound?)
To: fakecanuck
Get your hand out of my pocket and let me buy my own insurance.
Hard-cases can go to charity.
13
posted on
01/02/2004 12:21:37 PM PST
by
kanawa
(48*26'06.6" 83*30'00.2")
To: fakecanuck
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.
14
posted on
01/02/2004 12:35:06 PM PST
by
muleskinner
("Oh, please")
To: muleskinner
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.
15
posted on
01/02/2004 1:06:45 PM PST
by
BIGZ
To: fakecanuck
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.
16
posted on
01/02/2004 4:22:20 PM PST
by
lepton
To: fakecanuck
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.
17
posted on
01/02/2004 5:21:42 PM PST
by
Squawk 8888
(Earth first! We can mine the other planets later.)
To: quidnunc
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
To: fakecanuck
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...
19
posted on
01/03/2004 2:04:16 PM PST
by
Nanodik
(Libertarian, Ex-Canadian)
To: Servant of the 9
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!!
20
posted on
01/03/2004 2:18:31 PM PST
by
Canadian Outrage
(All us Western Canuks belong South!!)
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