Lies Are Truth

[oselle]

I had a business lunch today with two co-workers and our rep from one of our vendors, a printing company based in Canada. And the rep mentioned that a co-worker of his had recently and very suddenly died after complications from a burst appendix.

Back at the office, my co-workers both said that the unfortunate deceased had probably died because of how bad Canadian healthcare is.

And now I kinda want to die a little myself.

Comments

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

hmm...isn't Canadian life expectancy longer than US life expectancy?

Oh, wait. That would be too logical!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

No one does anything better than America, so even if Canadian life expectancy is longer it's probably just because we have more car accidents here or something. And no one ever, ever has surgical complications here. Ever. Never mind that the husband of one of our own co-workers went into the hospital for his hernia and somehow came out needing a liver transplant. Hmm...perhaps he had his hernia surgery in Canada. That would explain it.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware that Canada was a 3rd-world country with no knowledge of surgical cleanliness or procedures! Good thing your co-workers were on it.

*heavy-duty eyeroll*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You've never seen anyone excuse themselves from a conversation faster than I excused myself from that.

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

That's because they use lumberjack saws as surgical tools, and put maple syrup in all the IV bags.

One of my good friends is a Canadian here in the US for a teacher exchange program, and she thinks healthcare here is much worse and more expensive than she's used to.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I have known two Canadians just in the past couple of years who have moved back to Canada, citing the cost and accessibility of American healthcare as one of their major motivators. But we Americans are so desperate to believe that we're number one that we are capable of ignoring anything that conflicts with that delusion.

GRR ARGH

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

Oh for crying out loud. What is wrong with people?

You know what, there are like a thousand things I could say about how wrong your co-workers' statements were, but I'm actually finding myself a little too angry to be coherent.

Go figure.

Signed,
A Canadian by Choice, Motherfucker!

Re: GRR ARGH

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You poor Canadian thing. You just don't know any better.

Re: GRR ARGH

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[vshendria.livejournal.com]

That is just...grrr.
It's a wonder I made it to adulthood, growing up in the wilds of Canada with no modern health care.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You must have had to learn how to set your own bones and make medicines from plants, considering how long you all have to wait to see a doctor.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

You know what's sad? Before I read what they actually said I was expecting some line about how they deserved it for whatever they did to burst their own appendix. But bad Canadian healthcare is even better.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

how they deserved it for whatever they did to burst their own appendix

It wouldn't surprise me. People like this always seem to think that they're immune from sudden illness.

You know what's even more remarkable? We have a co-worker who is Canadian and recently needed major surgery and is currently drowning in debt because of all the things our insurance refused to cover. And she has said repeatedly that if she'd still been a Canadian citizen she would have gone up there for the surgery. And they KNOW this, they KNOW this and it just rolls right off their backs. It must take some serious, willful self-delusion to ignore the first-hand reality that's right in front of you.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Lies are Truth..

Anytime I hear a Republican/Rushbot/Teabagger/conservative speak, I am reminded of a scene in CS Lewis's The Last Battle. (by far the best of the Narnia books)

The cat says something about Aslan and Tash. "By mixing in a little truth, he had made the lie far stronger," says Lewis. And this is exactly what these assholes do. (Rush is a master at it.) Mix a little truth in with the lies. Somebody dies of a burst appendix, which of course means the Canadian health system is bad. You can't refute it. After all, says the asshole, "If the health system was so great, then they should have saved the man, right?" And if you try to reason that no, it's not the health service, sometime you just can't save someone, they pull out the sarcasm and say, "Oh, so you're saying he's still alive, right? Because precious Canada is so great..." etc.

You know, I won't lie. When get into arguments like this, I want to hit them. I guess I'm a bad person, but god what do you DO against this? Wait for them to die off?

There is no way to convince these people away from logical fallacies. It takes intelligence, reason, and TIME to refute one of these poisonous fucker pills. I've given up. Even if I could articulate a response, there aren't many who stay around long enough to listen or think. That's for the elitist arugula crowd anyway. They'd rather rub one off onto a Palin poster.

And Lewis is no help. In The Last Battle, Lewis talks about the strong lie, but he has absolutely no counter to this tactic. Instead, he drops the issue, destroys Narnia, and sends the whole crew to heaven, leaving us behind to deal with this earthly problem ourselves. We're fucked.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

And just to be a bug, I just had one of these conversations, on another blog, just now:

NYC: We have our health.
Combo: Something money can't buy.
Me: I would disagree that health is something you can't buy.
Combo: Oh? How much does it cost to cure terminal cancer?

As I said, I want to HIT these people.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh? How much does it cost to cure terminal cancer?

Take out the word "terminal" and ask how much it costs to cure cancer. Then ask what is the life expectancy of someone without insurance, or with limited insurance, or with a lifetime cap.

And even if the cancer is terminal, then the rich or those with "good" insurance can still afford palliative, quality end-of-life care that's out of reach for the less financially fortunate. So yes, money can buy health, and in terminal cases where it can't, it can at least buy dignity and compassion.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

What made me angry is that "combo" immediately mixed in the lie that terminal cancer is the ONLY disease out there. Health care can't cure it, therefore all health care is bad. Of course, I was thinking of cheap primary medical care that is buyable but that poor people can't afford. Basic dentistry comes to mind. Common drugs like blood pressure medication. And all that stuff that Remote Area Medical does.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I can't even begin to tell you how angry I felt listening to those two idiots tut-tut over how Canadian healthcare must have killed that poor guy. Of course it's pointless to try and reason with such people, and when one of them is your boss, it's not just pointless but fraught with potential trouble. Some other things happened over the course of that lunch that pissed me off and that was just the rotten cherry on top of it all.

I am a bad person too because part of me wishes that people like this would be forced into a situation where they have to realize just how awful and dehumanizing and outright deadly our system is. Sometimes that is the only thing that will wake them up.

The best and most persuasive lies are always the ones that contain a grain of truth. But in this case even that grain of truth is no truth -- to say that death from surgical complications is somehow the to-be-expected outcome of a national healthcare system is profoundly ludicrous. People die of surgical complications all the time, no matter where they are in the world. If that man had been in the U.S. and had had no insurance, he might very well have died from the initial appendix rupture...and even if he hadn't, a recent study said that emergency room admittants with no insurance are something like...40% more likely to die than people with insurance. Whatever killed that man, I'm sure it wasn't Canadian healthcare...and at least his family now has the comfort of not having to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills for their deceased loved one.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

Even if the guy had the "best health care in the world" at an expensive hospital, he still could have died from the appendix. They never mention when that happens.