"Something I've heard about Canada..."

by: los anjalis

Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 10:00:00 AM PST

"Something I've heard about Canada (correct me if i'm wrong) is that u have a Canadian style healthcare system."

This was Stephen Colbert speaking to Member of Parliament (MP) of Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh.  Hee-haw larious.  The rest of the interview can be found here (of note, the interview sounds pretty hostile but it's true to Colbert's satirical approach.

Not knowing anything about this liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, I explored his website, where he defends his interview with Colbert, as satire to reflect on.  But that's also where I found out that Dosanjh was previous the federal Minister of Health for two years.  He's a well-informed, outspoken advocate of the Canadian healthcare system, and recently was interviewed by NPR about it. He speaks from a human rights framework.  I'll share the interview below because it's interesting...

The two women who called in had both lived in the US and Canada, and had shockingly different experiences in regards to healthcare in the two countries.  One lived in the US for most of her life, and went to Canada after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and received all her treatments in a timely manner and without exorbitant costs or hassles from insurance companies.  The other experienced a few injuries in Canada, including an auto vs bike accident (she was on the bike), and was treated in the ER in Toronto right away, has had follow up primary care and chiropractor visits, has never waited more than 45 minutes, and has had MRIs and other expensive tests covered with no additional charge.  She moved to the US -- to San Mateo, California, and now cannot even purchase health insurance because of her pre-existing condition of a bulging disc in her back.  These stories cut so sharply through the rhetoric of "government takeovers" and other such right-wing talking points.

On a trip to Seattle and Vancouver that a colleague and I organized a few years ago, we gave videocameras to medical students to ask questions of residents of both cities.  The stories we collected were similar to those above, and the medical students returned to the US, inspired to talk to as many people as they could to find out more about the US healthcare system and help to transform it. 

In any case, here's the NPR interview in its entirety (10 minutes):