Brain
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Joined: 2/14/2007 Status: offline
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Medicare naysayer famous in US but blasted as traitor back home Globe and Mail - Jennifer Yang - 9 hours ago South of the border, she's become the poster girl for privatized health care and a familiar face on television. But here in Canada Shona Holmes of Waterdown, Ont. U.S. debate reminds us our medicare is worth it André Picard http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/us-debate-reminds-us-our-medicare-is-worth-it/article1235958/ Montreal — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Thursday, Jul. 30, 2009 07:23AM EDT Shona Holmes has become a central figure in the bitter debate about U.S. health-care reform. The Waterdown, Ont., woman is featured in a TV ad telling her tale of horror – how she had a life-threatening brain tumour but would have had to wait months for treatment. So Ms. Holmes remortgaged her home and flew to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for treatment, paying $97,000 cash for her care. “Now, Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the U.S.,” the narrator says gravely in the ad, paid for by Patients United Now, an offshoot of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a conservative group that promotes less government and lower taxes………….. Ironically, for all her lauding of private insurance, someone like Ms. Holmes would find it virtually impossible to buy insurance, given her medical history. The infamous ad claims that Canadians have long waits and are denied all manner of care because the “government says patients aren't worth it.” On the contrary, medicare – universal state-financed health insurance – means everyone is worthy of care and entitled to care. If nothing else, Ms. Holmes' foray into the U.S. health-care debate should remind us of how medicare, despite some shortcomings, is worth it. Americans can only dream of having such a system to bemoan.
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