The Problem with Canadian Healthcare

As an American living in Canada, I can personally attest to long wait times for doctors and diagonstics that dont exist in the US. Recently, my father had a terrible back problem and had to wait for 3 months in excruciating pain for an MRI and it took me 2 weeks of waiting to see my physician. So ya, the right wing propaganda machine is right... sort of.

The problem with the Canadian health care system is a problem that is almost unique to Canada in the industrialized world: a severe shortage of doctors. Although its a little dated, a National Post article from January 2008 puts it best

It's clear we have a problem. The country has approximately 15,000 too few doctors, a figure roughly double the total number of students in all years of study at our 17 medical schools combined. At a doctor-patient ratio of just 2.3 per 1,000 population, we are 24th on the list of 28 industrialized countries. Approximately 1.5 million Canadians cannot find a family physician as a result.

The reason for this shortage stems from an educational system that cannot keep up with the increasing demand for doctors. Now unless the current health care plans include serious overhauls of the American post-secondary education system, (a system which despite problems with cost, truly is the best in the world) I doubt any health care reform, even a Canadian style single payer, will result in Canadian style waiting lists

Between Me and My Doctor

Quick Post...
Everyone on the right seems to be particularly critical about 'the government coming between you and your doctor'. The assumption that is being made here is that there currently is no one between you and your doctor, and if the government were to step in things would be worse. However, this currently is not the case, as there is an insurance company acting as the middle man. Creating a public option would allow people to choose who they want to stand between them and their doctor, a profit driven corporation, or an agency of a democratically elected government.

When a Yellow Dog is Better than a Red Elephant

We have all become very familiar with the blue dog Democrats. The origin of their name comes from a play on the term 'yellow dog' Democrat(referring the extremely liberal Democrats choking yellow dogs blue). The phrase yellow dog Democrat originated in the 1900 Kentucky gubernatorial race during an internal democratic party uprising. Theodore Hallam, a prominent party member was speaking against the Democrats candidate when he was asked by a member of the crowd how he could be speaking against a Democratic candidate when at the state convention he had said that if the party had nominated a yaller dog, he would have voted for it.

He responded saying "I admit that I said then what I now repeat, namely, that when the Democratic party of Kentucky, in convention assembled, sees fit in its wisdom to nominate a yaller dog for the governorship of this great state, I will support him — but lower than that ye shall not drag me!" (Exit Laughing, by I.S. Cobb)

The yaller, or yellow dog Democrats represent the wing of the democratic party who for better or worse, will vote for a Democratic candidate no matter what. However, what concerns me, for want of a better term, are yellow dog republicans.

For a frighteningly large percentage of the population, politics is similar to spectator sports. Just like the way that the faithful have their team and stick to it, many people on both sides of the aisle will vote for any candidate as long as he has a D or R next to his/her name.

However, the anti-intellectual movement within the GOP has resulted in a congress where many of the GOP's elected representatives seem to be as far from the paragons of our society as possible. Representatives such has Congresswoman Bachman have the temperament of a rabid animal.

Four years ago, members of congress were committing egregious pork barreling. While this may have been awful for the nation, at least they were trying to serve their districts in earnest (or at least to get re-elected). Now the GOP has hardened into a defensive shell removing itself from the legislative process. Republican members of congress are playing solely to win the game of politics, without any thought to actual governance (even more than usual).

Which brings me back to the yellow dog. How long will the Republican base take to wake up and nominate to represent them a fine upstanding yellow dog?

new blog

hi all...

so i did say i was going to update more often, however the reason that I have not been is that I have been working on setting up an ACTUAL blog... not one of these blogspot ones.

The blog is called two guys off the street. It is the misadventures of me and my buddy zac as we attempt to start our own online empire.

The blog can be found at www.tgots.com

I hope you come and check it out

am yisrael chai

I have been finding myself getting into a lot of fights with my jewish friends recently over the current conflict in Gaza. One of my dearest friends went as far as to say that I was abandoning israel. I can honestly say that no words have stung me so deeply (outside those involved in affairs of the heart) since I was teased as a child. I do not think she was that out of line, being that I can easily imagine how what I said could have been taken out of context.

My main issue is this: I hate those stupid qassam rocket counter applications on facebook. I see it as a trivialization of a humanitarian disaster. Over a thousand people have been killed in Gaza, many of them innocent civilians. Personally I don't give a damn about the militants that have been killed, in fact while I hate to see people die as a general rule, these guys probably deserve it. Counting the qassams is effectively trying to say that the suffering being inflicted upon us is equivalent to the people in gaza, that we are victims to. We are not the victims here, and saying that we are is an insult to everyone's intelligence. Israel is a military superpower that can kick anyone's ass 5 times over. The Palestinian people are the victims here. However, the Palestinians being the victims does not make Israel the antagonist. That is a role that clearly goes to hamas, an organization that has absolutely no care for the welfare of the people they supposedly defend, and in fact uses them as human shields so that a) the israel wont attack, and b) when they do the civilian death toll is nauseatingly high.

My objection with Israel than is not that they are acting as the bad guys, but it is that they are not acting as the smart guys. While I understand that a military action is necessary, an offensive of this magnitude is overboard. At the end of the day, I do not see how this military action will further the goals of peace. Israel's overpowering military has effectively dumbed the nation down on both a strategic and tactical level. When engaging in a military operation, it is important for the actor to set out an objective with a known path for accomplishing it. The strategy of bombing an area till they stop shooting at us is about as clumsy as one can get. I understand that there is a need for the occassional missile strike to take out a rocket site as it is fired, but israel is going far beyond that. What ever happened to the era of heroic raids by commandos infiltrating in burkas taking out a top militant target in the dead of night and the 007 style assassinations of terrorist leaders that made Mosad one of the most feared intelligence organizations on the planet? Bringing back these types of operations would result in far fewer civilian casualties. This would be of significant importance for reducing future recruitment efforts by terrorist groups, improve international perceptions of israel, and most importantly would be saving innocent lives. Isnt that what the good guys are supposed to do?

an aged cliche

They say with age comes wisdom, well while I am getting age (no laughing from the people older than me... and while 24 aint a grandpa it means i aint a kid anymore) I seem to be lacking in gaining wisdom. However, aside from a decrepit (I jest) body, I seem to be shifting in my priorities in life. Nothing grand or anything, but I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to create. I am not sure what creates this drive, it could be a subconscious understanding of my own mortality (which I consciously deny) or as equally likely , it could be a desire to see what can come from my mind. Regardless of what it actually is, I can safely say that my artistic biological clock is ticking. I have tried to use my crappy writing (this) or crappy poetry (which you will NEVER see) as an outlet for this, however it seems that that has not quite been enough. So tomorrow I am going out to waste $250 to buy a used Sony A100 SLR which thankfully interfaces quite nicely with my dad's old Minolta Autofocus lenses and will tr my hand at amatur photography.

Peace corps ++

Hi all,

As I attempt to continue my commitment to my digital writing rag, i struggle to find things to write about because im guessing most people would be bored to tears by me writing about my thesis (and if you arent you should come and finish it for me). Anyways, I just booked my peace corps interview for next week, and I am a little nervous about it. I will have to do an update about how it goes when it happens. I am guessing that this is the first mention I have made of me joining the peace corps so i should probably back up and start from the beginning.

At some point last year, I had the fortune to become both dissillusioned in my future as a phycisist and insired by the ongoing primaries. The former resulted from the realization of two things; one being that if i continued down the road I was on, I would live a fairly stable and content life, something that bored me to tears, and second and possibly more important, that at the end of thge day, I am just not good at physics. Now some out there might argue that I have no faith in myself and that I cant be that bad if I made it out of Reed's program, but I respond to them, there are some people who are awesome at street basketball who have no shot at the NBA. I am one of those (but with physics, I really suck something fierce at basketball). The latter of the above mentioned catagory had more to do with the general tone of the election as opposed to my all around effection for President Elect Barack Obama. Hearing Senators John McCain (whom i still admire), Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama (thats a lot of capitilization) talk about service to the nation really struck a chord in me, and inspired me to go out and join the corps. Anyways, school was really busy, and I was retty involved with the election, so I was tied up for quite a few months. Anyhow, in October I picked up the pace. I will give a more detailed piece on my motivations in the near future. But anywhoo that is that