The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122219 Message #2712237
Posted By: Emma B
30-Aug-09 - 01:39 PM
Thread Name: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
Fair and honest ads like the one sponsored by the conservative Americans For Prosperity Foundation which spotlighted a Canadian woman, Shona Holmes.
This year 'her story was presented as a cautionary tale of what Americans could expect if they were to adopt a publicly-funded health care system like the Canadian health care system.
The ad featuring Holmes was broadcast at a cost of $1.8 million in eight US states.
"We went 100 per cent into socialized medicine and we lost all our options," Holmes said recently of the Canadian system.
According to Holmes she was diagnosed with brain cancer, and mortgaged her home to pay $100,000 for treatment at the Mayo Clinic when she was told she would have to wait six months for treatment in Canada.
She is quoted as saying the Canadian health care system failed her.
In an ad that was broadcast on American television she said: "If I'd relied on my government, I'd be dead."
Ian Welsh, writing in the Huffington Post, reports that while the Mayo Clinic characterizes Holmes's treatment as a success they say she had "a Rathke's Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland".
Welsh quoted the John Wayne Cancer Center: "Rathke's Cleft Cysts are not true tumors or neoplasms; instead they are benign cysts." Welsh characterized the US coverage that said the Canadian system failed her as "a lie".
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) interviewed neurosurgeons in Montreal and Toronto who described Holmes' claims as exaggerated and stated that her condition was a benign cyst which was not a medical emergency."
Wikipedia