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jamesqWe left our wee motel to discover a foot of wet snow on the ground. Luckily the Utah authorities actually plow the streets. I think we should adopt this strategy in Calgary.
Driving slowly and carefully down the highway we came to a line of cars that had been stopped by a state trooper. It turns out a semi trailer had jack-knifed on the highway and all traffic was blocked until that could be fixed. We were pretty close to the head of the line at least.
During the hour or so that we waited around, we chatted with other drivers. One was a large fellow who, discovering that we were Canadians, decided to go off about what a bad idea socialized medicine was. I could have gotten into it with him, but I just couldn't be arsed. Instead, I just let him rant and listened to him for a bit (the others near me pretty much abandoned me).
His arguments pretty much all could be flipped easily to support socialized medicine. At one point he said he could be for it if it was operated at least as efficiently as the VA hospital system in the states. His decription of how it worked (and this is second-hand, so don't take this as an accurate representation of reality) is that veterans who need to see the doctor, go to any VA hospital. The only person who decides what treatment is proper is the veteran and his physician. The government pays for it all, though some treatments may get delayed because resources are not infinite. However, life-threatening problems, get treated first.
I think he was a little suprised when I pointed out that this was a fair description of the Canadian medical system. He didn't realise that. I left him with the thought that the only thing stopping America from having the best health care system in the world was America. They could do it if they just herded the cats.
I introduced myself as we left to go back to our vehicles (the line was starting to move). His name? Fat Man Mike he said.
We continued on and made our way to the Thunderbird Inn for breakfast and ho-made pie!
The pies were delicious. If you're going by, try them out.
Driving slowly and carefully down the highway we came to a line of cars that had been stopped by a state trooper. It turns out a semi trailer had jack-knifed on the highway and all traffic was blocked until that could be fixed. We were pretty close to the head of the line at least.
During the hour or so that we waited around, we chatted with other drivers. One was a large fellow who, discovering that we were Canadians, decided to go off about what a bad idea socialized medicine was. I could have gotten into it with him, but I just couldn't be arsed. Instead, I just let him rant and listened to him for a bit (the others near me pretty much abandoned me).
His arguments pretty much all could be flipped easily to support socialized medicine. At one point he said he could be for it if it was operated at least as efficiently as the VA hospital system in the states. His decription of how it worked (and this is second-hand, so don't take this as an accurate representation of reality) is that veterans who need to see the doctor, go to any VA hospital. The only person who decides what treatment is proper is the veteran and his physician. The government pays for it all, though some treatments may get delayed because resources are not infinite. However, life-threatening problems, get treated first.
I think he was a little suprised when I pointed out that this was a fair description of the Canadian medical system. He didn't realise that. I left him with the thought that the only thing stopping America from having the best health care system in the world was America. They could do it if they just herded the cats.
I introduced myself as we left to go back to our vehicles (the line was starting to move). His name? Fat Man Mike he said.
We continued on and made our way to the Thunderbird Inn for breakfast and ho-made pie!
The pies were delicious. If you're going by, try them out.
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Date: 2010-02-16 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-21 05:49 am (UTC)Example: Hospital advertisements. I had no idea such a thing even existed. Up here you just go to the nearest hospital and trust that they'll treat you.
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Date: 2010-02-21 10:00 pm (UTC)I saw a documentary about the conservative republicans during our last election and one young man was interviewed who was maybe in his early 20's. He had something like "No to Socialism" written on his back. Socialism was spelled wrong and when asked what socialism was he didn't know. He could not define it, but he knew it was bad and that he didn't want it. So he knew that something he didn't know anything about was bad. We really need a better educational system too.
With as wacky as our government and some systems are, there still are some really great people here and I don't think you can accurately judge a people by its leaders. There are so many of us who don't agree and want to change things for the better, but the fear mongers scare the muggles and so the muggles vote against their best interest. I don't know if my rambles make any sense, but I'm cool if you want to talk more about it. Maybe I can explain things that you came across that you found puzzling. Hope you had a great time at Estrella War! I just got back from a Pagan Con this weekend. It was awesome!