This blog from Candy Minx came to my attention today and it is illuminating for all sorts of reasons. One, it surely pours some cold water all over the pointy heads of those in the US who pooh pooh universal health care and only spout a litany of evil. Two, it might even cause a few of us to consider that you don't have to live down here to be at the head of line when it comes to science and medicine.
Our friends in Canada where universal health care is a way of life, and has been for a long time, have accumulated a rather impressive lists of accomplishments from this nefarious system.
Maybe the Canadians need to take a page from our illustrious system and have their own FDA so their terminally ill folks can be protected from experimental drugs or kept from trials with flippant exclusive criteria. Some of us with ALS feel that we are protected to death.
Do I recall that the recent China lead toy import onslaught affected those to the north?
Heck if there was was CDA, maybe they could ban pharmaceuticals from the US and thereby keep their prices floating as high as ours. I mean why should we be the only ones where the choice between being able to purchase meds or eating is de rigeur?
Oh, let me pry my tongue from being firmly stuck in my cheek. Actually, these days my tongue doesn't do much that I tell it to. I am told it may be ALS. Could that be?
Just in case the link to Candy's Agnostic Minx blog didn't show, here it is:
http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-wonder-why-there-conspiracy-theories.html
Thursday, February 7, 2008
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2 comments:
Hi, thanks for the shout out.
I see you are a relatively new blog...and I am guessing that you have family or friends diagnosed with ALS? Hence your focused blog?
I don't know if Canada is on the cutting edsge of research for ALS but there are some research projects and fundraising...for example here:
http://www.als.ca/_news/4340.aspx
http://www.alsmb.ca/news.aspx
I don't believe there are reasons to disclaim mustual countries styles of health care...but rather we can learn form our differences ya know? My goal isn't to "force feed "universal health care to U.S. but rather to highlight to my government that we like our universal health care system...and not to be pressured by big coprporations to change it or privatize it.
We have another kind of difference in Canada...we don't have the same attitude to medication. In U.S. tv commercials are always selling drugs...we don't have those in Canada...I'd like to believe because we are open-minded to preventative care rather than leaving ehalth to last minute and then needing drugs...but
I don't claim to understand this difference of attitude.
I find it more interesting than antagonistic, if you see what I mean.
Cheers, and best of luck on your public awareness blogging!
Candy,
Cheers to you for giving this old grumpy ALS patient a reason to shout.
You and I are on the same sheet of music or prescription pad, or whatever.
It seems to me that no one has the lock on the market for superior knowledge and practices. Although, come to think of it, some of us seem not to realize that others can teach us.
Collaboration and cooperation, especially when it comes to health care, is a goal I drop to my bony old knees every day to achieve rather than competition and adversarial posturing and where profit and pride trumps patient care. (As the erudite Geico gecko says, "that is a figure of speech, I can no longer drop to my bony old knees, ALS stopped that that.)
When you mention the scary practice by TV up Canada way to not spend a billion loonies a year on TV commercials, I could hear the big US pharma's squealing as they slammed their fingers in the cash drawer. My goodness, how could you possibly even infer that the huge expense paid for flashy commercials to pressure harried doctors to write scripts might be better spent on research or some other triviality?
Down our way, erectile dysfunction and leaking bladder remedies and their merits as seen on our dinner time commercials throughout our country must be far more important than research on meds for so-called orphan diseases.
I always cringe when I hear that term, orphan diseases, but I never gave it a thought until I became one of the orphans. I digress.
Candy, I thank you again for being the precipitant by which I could raise what little voice I have remaining (ALS robs one of the ability to speak) to promote the subversive concept that we can learn something from others.
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