Institutional Insanity: The Undercover Socialized Medicine Expose

Steven Crowder

Steve Crowder went to Canada to see for himself the wonders and bliss of socialized medicine.  Like I did when I experienced three years of socialized medicine in England, he found little wonder and little bliss.

He and a Canadian friend went to the hospital and took a number, waiting to see a triage nurse.  No one could tell them how long they would wait, even after they finally saw the triage nurse. They estimated somewhere between two and ten hours to actually see a doctor.

They gave up after about four hours of waiting (and the nurse refused to give him a rubber glove to do a rooster head).  But they did talk to some other waiters at the hospital; a guy with a broken clavicle waited 5 hours to get seen, but they couldn’t do anything for him and told him to come back; another waited 9 hours to receive some penicillin.

They tried again the next day, this time to get a blood test for cholesterol levels. After another long wait, they saw a nurse who told them he couldn’t get a blood test there.  She suggested he try to get a family doctor, and told him he’d need to go to the clinic and get on one of their 2-3 year waiting lists to get a family doctor.

The good news?  The nurse assured him, “You’re young, so you have the time.  You won’t die, you normally don’t have a problem at your age.”

(Whew!)

She did say that if he didn’t want to wait, he could try a private clinic and pay $900 for a checkup.  However, she said they were probably full up and wouldn’t be able to accept any new patients.

They actually tried the private clinic, but were told you can only see the doctor between 9:00 am and 12:00 am Monday-Thursday.  They came back the next day during the vast window of opportunity for treatment…only to find that no doctors were available.  Why?  The receptionist said “You’d have to ask the government.” (I would venture a guess that even in the “private” market the government is still largely calling the shots).

(Just watching this video brought flashbacks complete with the same emotional reactions I used to have dealing with the massive bureaucratic crap that is life in a socialist country.  I once sat in an empty British hospital waiting room for 2-3 hours throwing up into a garbage can, waiting to see a doctor after I got food poisoning.)

They talked to a woman whose mother required the amputation of one of her legs due to poor circulation.  However, they had to wait so long for treatment (a year) that the woman ended up losing both legs.  She said if she had known how things were going to turn out, she would have spent her own money (on top of what she had already contributed to the Canadian health care system through her taxes) to take care of her mother earlier, but they kept stringing her along.

He also talked to a man who stepped on a rusty nail at his job and went to the clinic for a tetanus shot.   He waited a very long time, only to be told they were out of the drug and he would have to come out another day.

Still another case involved a young woman and her baby who had some sort of illness that had lasted a very long time and wasn’t getting any better. The baby became lifeless and lethargic, so they took the baby to the doctor, waited 7 hours to see a doctor, only to be told to go home.  The baby got even worse, so they took the child to a hospital where they waited two hours just to see a nurse, then ended up staying at the hospital about a week.

A man said he needs to see a dermatologist regularly due to a skin problem and ends up waiting about 7 months to obtain a 3 minute diagnosis and prescription.  If that medicine doesn’t work (which it didn’t), he ends up taking about a year and a half to get treated for his skin problem.

The average wait time to see a specialist in Canada is over 17 weeks, and costs Canadian citizens a huge amount of money…whether they use the system much at all.

I lived in England for three years, and saw the pathetic National Health Service there.  I didn’t just get to see it, I experienced it a few times in going to the hospital.  I also saw the huge tax burden the British people pay for “free” health care.  Even their pets and outdoor water spigots are taxed!

But as this video points out, things are so bad in Canada, they are taxed on their taxes. Yes, they pay tax on the taxes they pay, just like a sales tax only not on purchased goods but on taxes paid.  Neat huh?  (They were talking about doing that in England when I left; don’t know if they ever did).

Those in the United States who advocate a government health care system are either (a) profoundly ignorant about real life under socialism, (b) are slackers who don’t give a rip, (c) hopelessly enamored with Marxism, or (d) intentionally want to wound their own country.

It is insane to advocate this system for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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