31 Jul 2007 Canadian Health Care: Another Personal Story

Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute was unlucky enough to appear — briefly — in Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko.

As an American who was born and raised in Canada, she knows about the Canadian health care system, and in a much more personal way than Michael Moore, as her op-ed in the Providence Journal Monday makes clear:

In his new movie ‘Sicko,’ Michael Moore uses a clip of my appearance earlier this year on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ to introduce a segment on the glories of Canadian health care. Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not……Government-run health care in Canada inevitably devolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health-care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago — she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest-quality care in the government’s eyes — I can honestly say that Moore’s preferred health-care system is something I wouldn’t wish on him.

In 1999, my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. If he’d lived in America, the miracle drug Rituxan might have saved him. But Rituxan wasn’t approved for use in Canada, and he lost his battle with cancer.

But don’t take my word for it: Even the Toronto Star agrees that Moore’s endorsement of Canadian health care is overwrought and factually challenged. And the Star is considered a left-wing newspaper, even by Canadian standards…

The entire piece is worth reading.