Posted on 02/02/2010 7:33:49 AM PST by FormerACLUmember
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.
CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.
The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure.
Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday morning.
She's expected to provide more details about Williams's condition, as well as how the provincial government will function during his absence.
CBC reporter David Cochrane said Williams appeared to be in good health recently. He described the premier as "fairly active," playing pick-up hockey at least once a week when work permits.
You bet they do. By the thousands of cases every year. CC has a special wing devoted to pay as you go foreigners. When you are, like Number One in the world for heart diseases, you can do that. Of course they didn't get that way under Medicare reimbursements.
They also specialize in other diseases which tend to occur among hyper-rich Saudis.
Thanks so much, FormerACLU!! I will post this back to her (my liberal pal) immediately!!
Again, Muchas Gracias!!
“treatment in the USA”
Why would he come here when mikey moooore says Cubrrr has the best medical care?
The morbidly obese liar needs some communist treatment: Starvation on the crap rations doled out by the regime.
Then again, Michael Moore IS the communist regime and not subject by rules for the (literally) the enslaved masses.
Follow up (IBD 2-3-10)
Health Care: A Canadian premier, Danny Williams, said Tuesday he was headed for the U.S. for heart surgery. That’s a bit ironic, given that Democrats hail Canada-care as a model for the U.S. and call our system “broken.”
The provincial governor of Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t seem to think so when his deputy, Kathy Dunderdale, told the National Post: “He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done.”
She didn’t disclose exactly where, but she assured Canadians that his prognosis was excellent and she’d fill in for him during his three- to 12-week recovery period. “Ultimately, we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health,” Dunderdale said.
Now, someone like Williams, who’s both an elected official and independently wealthy, ought to be able to get world-class medical care in Canada. But he couldn’t. Because Canada’s single-payer health care system reduces the quality and quantity of care.
A physician can’t just go into business in Canada. He or she is joined at the hip to Canada’s health care system as paymaster, with any private care placed under strict government price controls.
That means long lines of rationing as well as lower-quality care. It’s so bad that even the premier prefers to head to the States.
He’s not alone. Other premiers, including Quebec’s Robert Bourassa in 1990, have sought that care, as has Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach in 2007. According to the Fraser Institute, 41,000 Canadians, or 1% of the population, were referred by their own doctors for nonemergency medical care abroad in 2009, a rise of about 10% from a year earlier.
Thousands more don’t even wait for a referral, leaving the country to seek treatment on their own. Clinics in U.S. cities like Buffalo, Seattle and Detroit do a booming business with Canadian medical tourists. Canadian newspapers are filled with U.S. doctors advertising their services.
For the wealthy Williams, U.S. health care paid for out of pocket is a viable option. Not so for Canada’s poor. If the U.S. moves to a Canadian-style health care model, not even the rich will be able to run from the unpleasant side effects of a socialist system.
Bill Clinton isn't available in Canada.
Dear Former ACLU,
You have NO IDEA how “APE SH*T” my liberal friend turned into after I e-mailed her all the data and info that you posted. She got nasty and testy and said that I’m just “throwing anything in the air to see if it sticks”. I just LOVE IT when they’re presented with all of this information.
After I cut & pasted the last statements you made, she wrote:
“I think Silvie, with respect to the question of quality of care in Canada, you have drawn a conclusion based upon several related assumptions which I do not believe are supported by any empirical data. Further, I suspect you and I have two different definitions of quality health care. I believe that quality health care is health care that is accessible and affordable to people over the course of their lives, particularly wellness care, which reduces the need for more costly/complicated interventions later in life. I would measure the quality of a nation’s health care system based upon the overall health of their citizenry based upon a common rubric. We may have fantastic palaces dedicated to cutting edge medicine in the United States, but I do not think that we are at the top of the list when measuring the overall health of our citizens. In fact, I think we are well down the list of industrial and developed nations.”
and...
“The Frasier Institute is an organization dedicated to the concept of free market principals. I wouldn’t consider any of their data particulary objective and their data is presented in a manner to bolster their fundamental belief.”
DON’T YOU JUST LOVE IT WHEN THEY HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY??
Your leftist friend strikes me as a very cruel, ignorant, and heartless person, not to mention irrationally stuck on stupid.
I hope I am wrong.
And if/when it passes and the fallout is the destruction of the finest health care available any place on Earth, where will the elites go for heart surgery? There will be no more excellent, premium quality available here, the medical schools will be run by gubmint as well as the hospitals.
Socialized medicine is for the little people.
No, you’re right.
We’re sorority sisters from college (early 1980s). We’re not alike AT ALL.
One of my friends is a “Marxist-by-Proxy.”
His wife is a rabid commie social worker, and he is a passive dependent wuss.
He is a physician (like me) and goes to Cuba, wants socialzed medicine, loves Obama, is a MoveOn.org member, ad nauseum.
It’s amazing how many friends I have (male & female) who start thinking like their spouses politically, philosophically, or whatever, once they get married. They become one of the same.
One of my college pals (who was a rabid Republican and who belonged to the College Republicans club with me) married a San Francisco very liberal woman, and nowadays he’s worse than she is with regards to his politics. He loves Pelosi, Obama and the whole gang. I can’t quite comprehend it.
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