Been a busy week.
Flew up to Montreal on Monday and then, in a rental car, drove up to Quebec City to do work on a video game. The weather appears to have declared war. The entire drive up to QC it rained, except when it sleeted. Once in QC, whenever I was indoors, the weather was fine; when I set foot outside it started to rain.
Then I drove back down to Montreal on Wednesday afternoon, this time with only intermittent spitting from the skies. Thursday morning the weather I remained indoors so that the weather was clear and flew to Calgary, my current location, attending the Calgary Expo, which seems very well run and organized.
Friday went very well. Met a lot of enthusiastic fans, sold a ton of stuff (guess Canadians have spending money because they don’t have to worry about paying for health care; lucky devils). Had a lengthy chat with Ty Templeton about the fabled golden age hero, Hoverboy. Been trying to take it easy, but this morning I woke up at 4:30 and haven’t been able to fall back to sleep. So here we all are.
PAD
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yep.. national health care hath it’s advantages. see you at the expo, sir.
Meanwhile, here in the States, I picked up your novelization of the movie Battleship.
So glad to hear of your success!
You see: Copyrights work.
For those of us left behind and curious re how the Canadian health-care system works, an old roommate had a brother who was a doctor in Montreal, and I was informed that doctors there, as a condition of their license, were required to “contribute” a third of their time to the public health-care system (the remainder of their lives was theirs to keep, subject to Canadian taxation, of course).
Maybe while you’re in Calgary, you can poke around to ascertain if that’s still the system (I’ve not seen the roommate in 10 years). Meanwhile, I’ll look up the Thirteenth Amendment to see if we could use that system here.
You just pointed out Something that the Harper Government should not be letting that province skate on under the terms of the Canada Health Act…but they’re looking the other way anyway for reasons of their own.
Peter David: Guess Canadians have spending money because they don’t have to worry about paying for health care; lucky devils.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, if you don’t mind waiting in an emergency room for an average of 23 hours. Or don’t mind not having being able to find a family doctor, which is a problem for more than a million and a half Canadians. (Source: John J. Waters, “Great Quotes About Socialized Medicine”, mdpolicy.org, January 20, 2011.)
If you’re rich, you’ll be okay. If you’re not rich, you might be okay if you want a checkup and don’t mind waiting, or if you have a life-or-death situation like a heart attack (though some Canadian doctors say that they sometimes can’t even get heart attack victims into an ICU).
But if you have something like endless headaches caused by something like a brain tumor, or need a knee replaced or cataract surgery, want to see a neurologist or get an MRI, well, good luck indeed.
The system isn’t perfect, but I’ve never had problems with it. Neither has mother when she needed hip surgery, or cataracts fixed, of father for his cancer treatments and surgery (successful). No, not a whole lot to complain about.
Were you able to pay for private services, or did you go to a government-run hospital? When was this?
All I know, Luigi, is this: Years ago, back in my days in the Marvel comics sales department, I was visiting a Canadian distributor and his son had a medical emergency. We immediately raced to the hospital where he was being tended to. The distributor told me how his son had always been a sickly child, and it had been a case of one thing after another for pretty much his whole life. “If we didn’t have the system we have,” he told me, “I’d probably be bankrupted by now.”
No system is perfect. But in my opinion, our sucks way more.
PAD
It would be far worse if it were government-run.
Even the things that countries like Canada and England can do for their patients are only possible because the new medicines and technologies are invented by the U.S. If the U.S. switched a government-run system, those innovations would dry up. Besides, why is it that people come from other countries come here for medical treatment? When Jordan’s King Hussein needed to get treatment for cancer, he came all the way here for it. Why is that? When Michael Moore needed to do something about his weight, he didn’t go to Cuba or Canada or England, whose systems he lauded in his movie Sicko, he went to a spa in Florida. I agree there’s much about the system that sucks. But having government take it over would mean less freedom, rationing of resources, long wait lines, and it would make our current system seem like paradise by comparison.
I am glad, however, that there are charities that will pick up the tab here for people who can’t afford things like surgery. It certainly took a load off my worries when I had to get oral surgery for my impacted wisdom teeth. Too bad they didn’t pay the surgeon’s fee, though.
That’s kind of the crux of the issue, though, isn’t it? Is it better to have to wait for government subsidized care, or is it better to not get any kind of care at all because you can’t afford it?
Luigi, all those folks you mention are rich. The rich can go anywhere they want for their health care. The US may have the best health care in the world, but what good does that do for the millions of folks who don’t have access to it because they can’t afford it?
Perhaps government-run or subsidized health care isn’t the answer, but something surely needs to be done to bring costs down. I once got to see a medical bill from 1934; the service charged was an appendectomy, for which the doctor travelled to a remote farm to perform the operation. The total cost, with charge for home visit,no insurance involved, was $70. Today, the same operation, without insurance, would run you upwards of 30 grand, even without the home visit which doctors no longer do. 70 bucks was a lot of money in 1934, but it was by no means comparable to $30,000 today (it’d be comparable to about $700 today, which is frequently the cost of the procedure if you do have decent insurance). Of course, today anesthetic is better, and the techniques are more advanced, but still, that’s quite the mark-up.
My father’s appendectomy about 10 years later cost about double the 1934 number, Gray, FYI. In other words, your calculations re costs adjusted for inflation are about right.
What a lot of people do not realize is that the current system in the U.S. obliges such outrageous prices primarily because, between the government and the insurance companies, we just keep throwing money at the problem while entrenched cost overruns never are redressed. There are many ways to lower the cost of health care in the United States, but the usual procedure is for the government to throw money at the problem, for the doctors, &c., to raise their fees, then for the government to complain some more and throw even more money at the problem. Billing for Medicare is a joke. The one time I went to a doctor in Florida during the time I’ve been here, to get some erythromycin since I had had influenza and didn’t want viral pneumonia, I told the doctor exactly what I needed, he wrote me a prescription (for $117), and because I must have looked old, he assumed I was on Medicare and, behind everyone’s back, billed for an X-ray and a host of other tests. Surprise! I wasn’t on Medicare, so the bill came to me! Which of course meant that the doc got caught. But, stuff like that happens all the time and will continue to happen under any government-administered system.
As usual, those supporting more intervention simply aren’t thinking. It’s easy to blame the doctor who treated me, except that our system encourages that kind of dishonesty. Obama goes around and demands, in the name of “fairness,” that those making more than $250,000 a year pay more extortion (I mean taxes) to Uncle Sam so that he can distribute more freebies, and of course the class to be preyed upon for the additional tax revenues includes most of the doctors. The extra taxes go to pay for (you guessed it) more medical care, and the doctors, to get even for being among the fleeced, raise their fees all the more! — why not? After all, the entire argument about “fairness” is jilted, since the demodonkeys never declare what their standard for “fairness” is (so it means whatever one wants it to mean).
Round and round and round and round and round and round and round we go!
Our system does provide care and technology that we take for granyed and which would almost have to diminish if we switched to a government run system.
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Dr. Cory Franklin cited the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson in a skiing accident as an example of this. Said Franklin: ” Richardson died of an epidural hematoma — a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.”
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“Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada,NO. In many US resorts, YES.”
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“Between noon and 1 p.m., Richardson sustained what appeared to be a trivial head injury while skiing at Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Within minutes, she was offered medical assistance but declined to be seen by paramedics.”
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“But this delay is common in the early stages of epidural hematoma when patients have few symptoms — and there is reason to believe her case wasn’t beyond hope at that point.”
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“About three hours after the accident, the actress was taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, 25 miles from the resort. Hospital spokesman Alain Paquette said she was conscious upon reaching the hospital about 4 p.m.”
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” The initial paramedic assessment, travel time to the hospital and time she spent there was nearly two hours — the crucial interval in this case. Survival rates for patients with epidural hematomas, conscious on arrival to a hospital, are good.”
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“Richardson’s evaluation required an immediate CT scan for diagnosis — followed by either a complete removal of accumulated blood by a neurosurgeon or a procedure by a trauma surgeon or emergency physician to relieve the pressure and allow her to be transported.”
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“But Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts is a town of 9,000 people. Its hospital doesn’t have specialized neurology or trauma services. It hasn’t been reported whether the hospital has a CT scanner, but CT scanners are less common in Canada.”
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Actually, it was later reported that Richardson received a CT scan at Centre Hospitalier Laurentien. The hospital does have the equipment.
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But what many fail to realize is that in a ski resort as luxurious as the one Richardson went to, most in the U.S. would have had such equipment on-site.
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But others point out, quite correctly, that Canada’s problem is the government-engineered lack of specialists in Canada.
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Neurosurgeons are not so easy to find in Canada where subspecialization is not rewarded, and 50-60% of boarded neurosurgeons leave the country to practice somewhere else within 2 years of their certification.
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There are reportedly only 174 neurosurgeons in the entire country. In the U.S. we have 3,500. A study on the need of neurosurgeons listed the density of neurosurgeons in the U.S. to be about 1/55,000 people which means that an analogous number of neurosurgeons needed in Canada would be about 604.
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It is true that neurosurgeons eschew emergency room coverage in the United States, but it is for completely different reasons than in Canada. Here, our ED’s don’t want to pay what it takes to hire a neurosurgeon for coverage; in Canada, no one wants to even be a neurosurgeon.
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So, in a sense, the Canadian model for health care failed Natasha Richardson because of an artificially created shortage of subspecialists, which is a purposeful design meant to keep costs low in a taxpayer-funded-system. The U.S. would very much like to go in this direction and the plan is to broaden non subspecialized care options while reducing higher-tech procedures, diagnostics and physicians.
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To top it off, Canada doesn’t have a medical flight system that compares anywhere fabvorably to that of the U.S.
Luigi – This was over the span of decades. Most recently, when mother’d had falls and wound up in Emergency (just in case) where she was tended to, including scans and X-rays, within a couple of hours, in spite of not having any obviously life threatening condition. As for medicaL science, Canada is no slouch with inventions of its own ranging from the discovery of insulin to treat diabetes to that of the scanning electron microscope. And how many millions have these helped?
Luigi – “It would be far worse if it were government-run.” Every study I’ve seen has shown the Government-run Canadian system costs less per capita than the private U.S. run one. Probably something to do with the for-profit angle.
Probably something to do with the for-profit angle.
I do believe we have a winner.
That is fine and dandy if you’re a famous actress, a king, or movie director. What I want to know is this: if you’re an average joe in the US, how do the price and quality of medical care compare to the equivalent to an average joe in Canada? Or to the average joe in other 1st-world countries?
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That should be easy to research, but with the ideological blinders everybody seems to use regarding this issue, I will hold my breath.
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Cutting edge medical research is important, particularly in the long term, but not if it results in greater sacrifice for the common man.
I’m trying to recall when was the last time I saw an actual doctor for something. It certainly wasn’t any of the last several times I made DOCTORS appointments for various things. No, I usually see nurses and whatever instead.
Thankfully, when I make an appointment with my dentist, I actually see my dentist, and not his assistants.
And I really don’t want to hear BS about emergency rooms elsewhere. Just the other day a friend spend 5 hours waiting to be seen in an ER. 13 years ago I spent more than 3 hours duct taped to a board in a room after a car accident left me with some immediate neck pain
Hint: there aren’t nearly enough doctors here in the “good ol'” US of A, as well. And our system blows chunks.
3 hours? 5 hours? Luxury! In my day we had to make an appointment before we got sick and then we would wait 4 years until our doctor finished their residency. By that time we were dead. But we were happy!
Btw, probably the #1 reason we have such high costs here: we’re a nation of fat áššëš.
Study: Obesity adds $190 billion in health costs
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47211549/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/
On that we can agree. So many things, from heart disease to depression could be prevented or treated if people would get off their áššëš and did some steady, regular physical activity.
It goes beyond that though. We, as a nation, have decided we just don’t care all that much. Oh, we go on and on about it, but then…
Here a bill has been put forth to finally get trans fats out of schools – from the cafeteria menus and vending machines – state-wide. Only, Republicans are going to fight it because they don’t think schools should be told what to serve.
Now, it would be easy to blame Republicans (and they do their fair share of trying to tell schools what to do), but it took both parties to get pizza declared a vegetable.
This country is all bark, no bite when it comes to health. Whether it be exercise, smoking, eating, etc.
Not to mention (in getting back to the profit angle) curing diseases makes money. Preventing them doesn’t.
Of course, if you make the school lunch food too unpalatable the kids will just eat far far worse stuff from home. I’ve seen this happen up close and personal.
And while one CAN make healthy foods that taste good it is a lot harder than it looks and school lunch cooks are not exactly Iron Chefs. Nor should we expect them to be, they have to get a thousand meals out in a short period of time.
People have the ability to choose a much better and varied diet than ever before. If they don’t choose to, what should we do–force them? (And besides, if our eating habits and lousy health care are so bad, why are we living so long? And living so well. My great grandmother, was an old woman. I look at old people now and at the same age as she was they are far more vibrant and active. They aren’t all Helen Mirren but there are some serious geriatric ášš kickers out there. So something must be going right.)
That would be a good campaign strategy for Romney: “The Dems want to force you to eat brocolli.”
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I suppose the threat would be one of the few things capable of making me turn conservative. Brocolli is so gross.
Rene:
Crack two eggs carefully and use the half shells to separate the yolks. Set the whites aside for use later, in cake frosting or whatever. Put the yolks in a small dish and cover them with lemon juice. Blend the juice and yolks together, add salt, pepper, marjoram, and some Cayenne or crushed red paper to give it some bite. Now, float the small bowl in a larger bowl of boiled water; change out the water regularly with fresh, boiling water to keep the temperature up, and stir till it thickens. Then add pats of butter slowly and blend them into the rest, to the proportion of about 50/50. Steam or boil the brocolli for 5-7 minutes only so it doesn’t get mushy (to use the stems, remove the outer bark with a paring knife and quarter). Put the sauce (it’s called Hollandaise) on the steamed brocolli to make it your favorite vegetable. It’s good for you (it strongly helps to prevent colon cancer).
See: Wasn’t that a lot more effective than giving the government power to force you to eat it unadorned? Or than paying a surgeon to cut your guts out?
Pity about the weather. Quebec city is lovely, especially the older parts. Did you at least get a look at ‘lower town’ out near the river?
The StarWolf,
“Luigi – “It would be far worse if it were government-run.” Every study I’ve seen has shown the Government-run Canadian system costs less per capita than the private U.S. run one. Probably something to do with the for-profit angle.”
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I do believe Luigi was referring to the quality of care…and it’s a cliche but it’d true – you get what you pay for. Have you ever tried dollar store bacon? Literally biting into fat and beyond unhealthy and disgusting. Now try some Lean Cut Bacon from Oscar Mayer or Hatfield or even better places and you will notice a world of difference.
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And some of that cost may simply be that, as stated above, we have more neurosurgeons, etc. per capita.
So explain to me why, according to the CIA World Fact Book ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html ) the U.S. is ranked number 50 on the list of life expectancies world wide (78.49 years) while Canada ranks 12th (81.48 years). It would seem we are doing something right.
It’s not a perfect system, but I and my family haven’t ever had significant problems with it. Definitely never had problems with wait lists or getting into ER or ICU, and believe me, with a raft of aging relatives, we have a lot of recent experience with the system. Uncle had two heart attacks last year – into the cardiac unit in 30 minutes each time! And we’re not rich.
When people can’t find a family doctor, that just means they haven’t found a doctor at a private clinic who will add you as a regular. You can still go to any clinic you like. If you go to the same clinic regularly, the team there will get to know you; you’re just not guaranteed the same doc. I’ve done that when I lived in a different province for six months; it was completely satisfactory. You can go to any clinic or doctor you like – there is no insurance company that restricts choice.
It’s true that there is somewhat (I emphasize *somewhat*) less access for elective surgery (a headache-causing tumour is not elective – that’s urgent!) here. But that’s because the main emphasis is on preventative medicine, to reduce costs to our system, with the idea that not as many people will need the more elaborate/expensive treatments in the first place.
Robert Crim: never heard that docs need to contribute a third of their time, but then that’s Quebec – might be different than out here in BC.
Well, I assume a national law applies nationally, and I know only what I was told (I’ve been to Canada twice in my life, and one of those was just to your side of the Falls).
What is certain is that, somehow, your system obtains practitioners as well as patients, and I assume they are not paid as much as in private practice (though as we all know, “assume” is “u” and “me” made into an ášš).
Since I can’t get a squawk out of David (he’s wary of my bite), perhaps you could enlighten us re just how the system does work. It makes no sense to criticize something we know nothing about. If there be a time-contribution requirement set by law, it has to be written down somewhere.
Various parts of Québec society have had their own issues with the rest of us for as long as I can remember. Longer, in fact. Small surprise that their administration of their components of the health care system has its own quirks.
The feds currently operate on Conservative Party doctrine that says that, no matter what’s on the federal statute books, the provinces and territories are likely to know better what they need and can afford. The idea of a truly national health care system offends many of their leadership and key supporters, near as I can tell.
guess Canadians have spending money because they don’t have to worry about paying for health care; lucky devils
I would have guessed having conservatives in charge of the government would help keep the economy doing better than would be the case in some other countries we could mention.
Ah, but perhaps we’re both being too simplistic.
On a more serious note, I hope you got the chance to eat out at some of the restaurants in Montreal. My daughter goes to Concordia University and I was just up there for a visit myself two weeks ago. Some wonderful eateries, an incredible diversity of choices and ethnic cuisines. Vegan sushi? yes and it was amazingly good, with unagi that was so close to the real thing that I would not be shocked if they one day raided the kitchen and discovered it full of actual eels.
actually, I love the entire town, except for the nightmarish parking rules. Kind of like being in Europe without the Europeans. My apologies to my European friends but, well, yeah.
Not really. The previous conservative administration trashed the economy by introducing the wrong tax at the worst time possible. Retail took a licking and the Debt ballooned. It took years of liberal rule to finally get it back under control and start paying it off. Then came the current conservative administration which spent months refusing to admit there was anything wrong – all the while the Recession was on us. It took the opposition parties threatening to force an election before the conservatives did the stimulus thing to help stabilize things.
Does Canada have The Avengers yet? I don’t know why it’s opened here in Australia before the US but I’m not complaining.
And yes, it is as good as all the hype.
Nope. The signs indicate, in both French and English, that it’s opening the 4th of May.
PAD
Well then, May the Fourth be with you!
No, wait….
Just got my midnight Thursday tickets yesterday. Booya!
btw, CABIN IN THE WOODS totally rocked. Between this and TRICK R TREAT it seems the best way to see a good horror movie is to look for one they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into giving a release.
Of course they don’t have the Avengers. They have Alpha Flight.
Touche’!
If “The Avengers” and other films this summer do monster business, maybe someday we will get a cool “Alpha Flight” movie
May we end up with an Alpha Flight movie or three!
I’m wonder if we should go for Paul Gross or Nathan Fillion as Mac Hudson…
It was a real pleasure to meet you Friday and Saturday in Calgary. My wife was pleased we had a few minutes to talk a little Broadway, and we were sorry to dart off without proper thanks. As you probably saw even from behind a creator table, things were pretty busy and there were many terrible queues to be stood in. We thought we’d get a chance today, but the wait to get in the building was more than we could do.
It wasn’t our best convention ever, so we appreciated the short pleasant visit. Thanks again.
I hope when Marvel makes the Alpha Flight movie, John Byrne and Chris Claremont get some Canadian healthcare, along with a fat paycheque, unlike what Jack Kirby & fam will get for the Avengers movie.
Videogame? Anything you can talk about at present?
“guess Canadians have spending money because they don’t have to worry about paying for health care; lucky devils”
While I know this was just a humorous comment and am certain you don’t believe it to be literally true, there are enough folks who might believe it to be literally true that I must at least post a clarifying comment:
Canadians do pay for health care – it’s not free. The details of how it’s paid for differ.
Getting off the subject of Canadian health care for a few moments, thank you for visiting Calgary again. I don’t think I’m going to forget the art review you did for another attendee any time soon.
Mr. David,
It was a pleasure to meet you, however brief. Thank you for signing my X-factor #1, I was definitely more than thrilled.
Kathleen the gypsy Scarlet Witch cosplayer
Two comments:
The Expo is actually generating some controversy due to people being turned away:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Chaos+comic+expo+with+thousands+turned+away/6536346/story.html
In terms of medical: I’m a Canadian with a medical plan through work. Even so I would absolutely vote no to privatizing the medical system warts and all. The standard government plan is geared so the wealthier pay more into the plan than the poor (at a certain pay level you pay nothing into the plan). I’ve been at different income levels in my life and was not treated any worse when I was on income assistance. If I were to lose my job tomorrow and suffer a serious injury I would not wind up in permanent debt. Sure it could be improved in certain ways but tellingly my dad, a senior won’t visit the US anymore because he’s afraid of how much he’d lose if he was injured. If there was a vote tomorrow to switch to a privatized system, no it wouldn’t be unanimous but it would still be voted down, particularly since there are so many horror stories out there about situations in the States that would never happen here.
I don’t know if that’s controversy so much as it was a slow news day here. I’ll be interested to see how the organizers intend to address it for next year, though I’ve no idea how they’ll be able to match this one.
Without doubt, it long has been reported here that most Canadians like their plan, and because you are a democracy, I must assume that, were such not the case, you’d change it.
What is objectionable here is that socialistic plans generally rely fundamentally on getting someone else to pay for your care, and the fact that you have sliding scales for “contributions” indicates the Canadian plan is part of this system. In other words, some Canadians DON’T like your plan but have to be part of it anyway.
In the United States, that would result in craziness.
Obamacare simply declares that there is “health care” and that everyone must contribute to it. Since that takes about 10 pages to say in a statute, one only can wonder at what little exceptions and special perks are in the other 2,700. But, the long and the short of it is that there is not one giant good, “health care.” Each of us has his own special risks he or she will have to face in life, and that is what one needs to insure against, to the extent one is purchasing insurance wisely. In my family, it’s asthma problems on my mother’s side and mild cardiac or cancer problems on my father’s, and I don’t know for certain if I am among the chosen here, but I know what I have to look out for — I will die of something — and if I take proper precautions, I won’t be bankrupted by anyone.
On the other hand, it is about as likely that I will get AIDS as that I will die in a Mississippi steam boat boiler explosion, and I don’t need to insure against that — unless I’m compelled to by the Obama Administration because homosexuals have a lobby inside the Democratic Party. Since Obama already knows I won’t vote for him, he has all the motive he needs to send me a bill for one of his supporter’s (very expensive) treatment — and that’s the way it always will be here.
The cure would not be to put Republicans in power (they have their special interests too). The cure lies in not having so corruptable a system at all.
Your father is in no danger, coming to the U.S. Many hospitals here honor national health plans from other countries (after all, they’re accustomed to dealing with Medicare). If they don’t, you always can negotiate. For a true emergency, you cannot be turned away for want of funds.
It appears to me that there are a great many misconceptions on both sides.
PAD: Any chance you can tell us anything about the video game you were working on?