Canadian Health Care, good system or bad?

Been too busy/tired/lazy to write in the block for such a long time. I guess it took something to get me really annoyed to start again.
Watching the debate about health care going on in the United States, I see an amazing example of misinformation. One example of this is even though President Obama insists that he’s not aiming for a Canadian style health system, his opponents insist that he is! Even those who are on his side use the Canadian system as an example of one to be desired.
Anyhow, I’m not an American, so I won’t get into the debate as to what you guys should do. Well, other to make this comment: aren’t you embarrassed that millions and millions of your citizens have no health insurance, that sick or injured people actually get turned away from emergency rooms if they can’t pay? That the infant mortality rate in the richest country in the world is thirty third on the list of countries?

The actual purpose of this entry is to balance some of the horror stories that have been spread about the Canadian health system. I won’t be giving government propaganda or statistics; just my own family’s example.

I have been living in Canada for thirty five years. During most of that time we didn’t have occasion to use the medical system any more than the average family with four active boys might do.

Then, about ten years ago, everything changed.

Our youngest, a seemingly healthy sixteen year-old, was rushed to emergency with appendicitis. There was never any question as to whether he would be treated! We had to show our health card, of course, but nobody gets turned away from a Canadian ER. If one is a foreigner, or isn’t in the system for any reason, financial details are sorted out later.

Then came the shocker, our son has Crohn’s disease. If you don’t know what that is, follow the link. It’s debilitating, it’s painful, it’s currently incurable, and in the US it would be financially ruinous to my family.
In the last ten years, my son has had many stays in hospital; we’ve lost count of blood and other tests. There are expensive drugs, and the constant care of an MD and a Gastroenterologist required.
A short time later, my wife was rushed to hospital with life threatening haemorrhaging. A complicated hysterectomy followed.
In the last four years, after more than sixty years of never having to go to a doctor except for small injuries, I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, had a prostatectomy, an appendectomy and a hernia operation.

The Canadian health care system is far from perfect, but apart from the monthly dues, all of the above has cost not a penny!

My retirement funds have suffered lately, but if I were a citizen of a certain other country, they would have been wiped out.

So, even if every negative over the top comment you’ve ever heard about our health care system were true, it’s still better than the nothing that millions of other people have.

And I, for one, am very thankful.

Why this blog?

What’s this blog about? I’ve been a machinist for over fifty years, and a CNC programmer-machinist for over thirty years. I’m also involved in providing some software to help machinists and other trades people do their jobs.
I have a lot of experience, and I’d like to share that as much as possible, hence this blog.

Must the posts be about machining, CNC, programming or other trade topics? I hope not!

Let me start with a pet peeve, and you can tell me what you think.
I was listening to a program on the radio regarding higher education, about how important a university degree is to get anywhere in life. It seems that so many people think that if you don’t have a degree you’re doomed to a life of dull drudgery, living poverty stricken down by the railway tracks (I love a bit of hyperbole).
Garbage! I bet most of the experienced trades people in this city make as much, if not more that most of the holders of degrees in arts or social sciences in this city.

Am I against higher education? Of course not; just the perception that any degree is better than none. Get the right education, set the right career path and you can make a lot more money than I do.
Trouble is, it seems to be that some sort of stigma is attached to people who are not academically inclined; those of us who just like to build stuff, or fix stuff, or cook, or drive… you get the picture.

And let’s not forget that we can continue to learn. I left school after grade nine to start my apprenticeship (times were different then, grade twelve is better today); since then I’ve studied three languages in addition to improving my English, taken art courses, computer programming courses and… well, over fifty years one can build quite a list.

Am I boasting? Probably, but so should we all. I’m sick of people trying to make us feel inferior because we get our hands dirty! For me, it’s a point of pride. My wife and I have raised a family, even sent some of them on carefully thought out higher education, on a machinist’s wage, with the occasional help of a waitress’s earnings.

Hold your head up!

How equal do we have to be?

It's my first entry. I haven't event gotten around to posting a complete profile or picture yet.
I'm no oil painting, so that's probably a good thing!

I love to read the newspapers, watch the news, and generally observe what's going on in the world. I'm constantly amazed at how we think, how we stick to our views regardless of all the evidence that we're being stupid.

Case in point: equality of the sexes. I'm all for it; equal pay for equal work, complete respect for a person regardless of race, gender, intellectual ability, and anything else that makes us different.
But why do we have to go to extremes? Why have people doing unsuitable jobs just to prove how much we believe that all are equal?

Last week in our town a diminutive female police officer was severely beaten when she tried to arrest a 6’4” (1.93m for the rest of the world), violent man!

She was eventually rescued by a couple of bystanders (men!) who were injured themselves.

Why? Did she feel she had something to prove? Why not call for backup? I admire her bravery, but I don’t think she’s very smart! Or was it just the pressure to be “equal” to her male colleagues?
Or, even scarier, do her superiors expect her to be equal to the guys in any situation?

Don’t even get me started that she apparently wasn’t allowed to use any weapons! All you Taser opponents: what do you think about that?