If I hear “Canadian health care”…
by Clark Newhall, MD, JD
Words matter. The insurance companies (as Wendell Potter will attest) have used that to their advantage and have tried to turn “single-payer” and “Medicare For All” into pejoratives, much as Ronald Reagan did with “socialized medicine” while in the pay of the AMA.
But there are really no other words to use and I find that “Medicare For All” and “single-payer” are labels that best describe what I am talking about.
When I encounter opposition to the words, I find that a small amount of education is in order, and usually works. Here is one example. A common response of the uninformed to the word “single-payer” is to mention Canada.
If I hear “Canadian health care” from my listener (as I did on a radio interview at 0200 this morning) then I tell the following story:
I live in Canada in the summertime. My friend there, Red, had to go to the hospital a year or two ago and was hospitalized for five days. It seems like he got every test and x-ray known to God and man while there, in addition to five days of IV medication.
A few days after he got out of the hospital, I saw him walking around town.
“How are you doing, Red?” I said.
“Pretty good”, he said, “but I’m pissed off at this hospital bill I got.”
I was dumbfounded. “Hospital bill? What are you talking about? You don’t have to pay for hospital care in Canada, I thought.”
He explained. “Yeah, I had a private room. I’m mad. I didn’t know it would cost me 240 bucks. That’s outrageous.”
I had to agree. Outraged is how I felt too.
When I told this story to 3 complete strangers on a plane recently, apropos of nothing, one said, “If they can do it in Canada, why can’t we do it here? The insurance companies are screwing us and have bought off the politicians.” The other two nodded in agreement.
Words matter, but they matter most when they are combined with ideas and stories.
Dr. Newhall is a physician and attorney in Salt Lake City, Utah. His website is health-justice.org.