BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: gnu
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 07:17 PM

1000 posts. Sad.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 07:31 PM

The jury is still out on Kennewick man.

I used to live in Kennewick, while I was working at a radio station in Pasco, across the Columbia River. I've heard two different reports as to where Kennewick man's bones were found:   one, that he was found in Columbia Park, just up the pike from the town of Kennewick by a couple of people (Will Thomas and David Deacy) attending the annual "Atomic Cup" hydroplane races on the Columbia River. Another, that he was found on the shores of the lake raised by McNary dam, downriver from Kennewick.

The bones now reside in the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, just a ten minute drive from where I now live in Seattle. Analysis is still under way and not many conclusions have been arrived at yet.

It is not certain where Kennewick man came from. Some 9,000 years ago, there were several waves of migrant hunters who followed game herds over ice bridges, and although many anthropologists and paleontologists think he might have been Caucasian, that is uncertain. And trying to claim that he was one of the "original" settlers and what we now consider to be Native Americans are the "immigrants" is hypothetical at best.

Kennewick man apparently died with an arrowhead in his body. So—who done it? Maybe someone who regarded himself as one of the original settlers and Kennewick man as an unwelcome immigrant.

I wouldn't try to base any kind of argument about immigrants, or who got here first, on Kennewick man.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 07:34 PM

It puzzles me that people fail to see that these things are all interconnected.

          But leaving that behind, the US got started with private health insurance during WWII because companies couldn't offer employee raises. So health insurance being tied to work was already in place when the European nations began to rebuild after the war.

            That being the case, health insurance evolved along different lines than it did in other parts of the developed world. So the US is faced with having to change something that has been ongoing for a number of decades. Other developed nations were able to start anew without pre-existing conditions.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 08:09 PM

NHS started in 1948. Not exactly "a couple of decades" after the war.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 08:16 PM

Lets do the timewarp? US in the darkages, everyone else with the programme. No story..

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 09:02 PM

The kind of negative campaigning that's going on now is nothing new. For a bit of perspective, here the full text of a poster from the 1830s, circulated by canal, steamboat, toll road and stagecoach interests (there's a woodcut at the top showing a child being crushed by a train while an unfortunate carriage is being flung off to othe side).

MOTHERS LOOK OUT FOR YOUR CHILDREN!

ARTISANS, MECHANICS, CITIZENS!

When you leave your family in health, must you be hurried home to mourn a
DREADFUL CASUALTY!
PHILADELPHIANS, your RIGHTS are being invaded! Regardless of your interests, or the LIVES
OF YOUR LITTLE ONES. THE CAMDEN AND AMBOY, with the assistance of other companies
Without a Charter, and in VIOLATION OF THE LAW, as decreed by your courts, are laying a

LOCOMOTIVE RAIL ROAD !

Through your most Beautiful Streets to the RUIN of your TRADE, annihilation of your RIGHTS and regard-
less of your PROSPERITY and COMFORT.          Will you permit this?    Or do you consent to be a

SUBURB OF NEW YORK ! !

Rails are now being laid on BROAD STREET to CONNECT the TRENTON RAIL ROAD with the WILMING-
TON and BALTIMORE ROAD, under the pretense of constructing a City Passenger Railway from the Navy
Yard to Fairmount ! ! This is done under the auspices of the CAMDEN AND AMBOY MONOPLOY !

RALLY PEOPLE in the Majesty of your Strength and forbid THIS

O U T R A G E !

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Aug 09 - 09:23 PM

WHOAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

By God, they really had a gift for OUTRAGE back then!!! And for absolute, total bullshit too.

Perhaps some progress has been made in the past 180 years... ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 01:34 AM

The skeletal remains known as Shuka Kaa are older than those of Kennewick man and DNA testing has linked him to native people all the way from Alaska to Peru.

All of that aside, though, everyone benefits when all have access to good health care, and everyone pays when all of us don't have access to good health care. All other considerations are just distractions. People had been using horses and wagons for centuries prior to the 20th century and we changed that in a very short period of time, even though that had been an ongoing practice for much longer than a few decades. We can do it with regard to health care as well, especially considering the fact that there are quite a few working models that we can learn from that are already in existence. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 09:23 AM

"NHS started in 1948. Not exactly "a couple of decades" after the war."

               Thanks for the clarification, McGrath. Like I said, the European systems developed after the war. The American system started before the war was over and has been evolving for decades since that time.

               There have been skeletal remains found older than Shuka Kaa, they just haven't been able to extract DNA yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 09:34 AM

So we can say that Kennewick man, regardless of where in the world he originated (and the latest findings are that he is most closely related to the Ainu of Japan), is not indicative of anything at all at this time.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 09:47 AM

It doesn't matter anyway. All humanity are of one spirit, and they would be wise to act that way and get along with each other harmoniously and help one another.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Emma B
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 10:00 AM

I know little about Kennewick Man apart from what I have read on the web; however, in a neolithic tomb on Orkney built around 3,000 BC of the remains of some 342 individuals (probably covering several generations) some were found to have abnormalities that would indicate a severe genetic disability in the population probably resulting in blindness and deafness etc.

Nevertheless these individuals lived to the same adult age as their contempories showing that even these (primitive, by our standards) ancestors had care and concern for those in their community not so fortunate as themselves.

Like many people who have posted here, as a European, I find it hard to comprehend why the most powerful and wealthy nation at this time can't or simply won't extend such universal care to its community.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 10:11 AM

Because it is in bondage to huge monied interests that are privately owned, Emma, and whose actions are intended to benefit themselves, not the general public. It is a financial Oligarchy, intent on securing profits.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 10:22 AM

Kennewick Man may deserve his own thread, buty he surely doesn't belong in this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 10:34 AM

His presence here is about as appropriate as Chongo Chimp's would be...

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 12:32 PM

And Chongo Chimp can be found in many threads!

    "Like many people who have posted here, as a European, I find it hard to comprehend why the most powerful and wealthy nation at this time can't or simply won't extend such universal care to its community."

            Emma - As previously posted, the US is in a postition of needing to dismantle the existing system before it can errect a new one, or it has to do both at the same time.
                   And before it can extend universal care to its community, it has to define what its community is. That's how the discussion got off on anthropological issues in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 01:28 PM

The US can't really be said to have a health care "system". What it has is a lack of a system, so there is nothing to dismantle. What the US has is a health care market, which is something else entirely. So what needs to be done is to build a health care system, as other countries have done. We're in a much better situation for doing that than they were when they built theirs, since we can learn a lot from the systems that are being used in other countries, and their successes and failures. We can also learn from the successes and failures of other countries about the best way to approach the question of how to define our community.

The only reason we don't currently have a universal health care system is as noted above, we are in bondage to huge corporate interests that only care about money and don't care how many people have to die in order for them to maximize their profits and enrich their shareholders.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 01:53 PM

. . . and we certainly don't want a system like the UK's where cancer survival is abysmal. We're not going to let people die just to say "Me and my neighbors get lots of free shit!"

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 01:54 PM

the US is in a position of needing to dismantle the existing system before it can errect a new one,

That just isn't true, and it isn't how things are done, unless you are Pol Pot or similar.

The system of health care that existed in Britain before 1948 wasn't "dismantled", it was either incorporated into the NHS, or it continued, and continues, alongside it.

A major reform to the medical insurance system in the USA, which would mean that everyone was covered, and that it would no longer be possible for private insurance companies to exclude people and to rip them off is perfectly achievable, and does not involve "dismantling the previous system".   

If it caused a shake out of the private insurance companies, all to the good, and could lead hopefully to a situation in which for-profit insurance companies were no longer a significant part of the scene. Private health insurance in the UK manages very healthily without such companies.

There would be no reason for any upheaval in the actual medical provision - family doctors would continue to be famiy doctors, hospitals would continue to be hospitals. Changes and improvements could come on stream as the need for them was recognised.

The system that emerged would be different from that in other countries, just as is true in these various countries. But there's no reason it shouldn't be a perfectly good system, providing quality affordable health care to all, just as all these other countries manage to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 03:57 PM

To get a grasp of what drives the American health care "system," this would be an hour well spent (aired last night):

CLICKY.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 05:43 PM

A friend/coworker of mine just told me our company health insurance (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas) won't pay for her mammogram because they say she has a pre-existing condition, even though she has never had cancer.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 05:52 PM

In my opinion this is by far the best article that has appeared in any newspaper this month: Hit the Reset Button

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 05:54 PM

Heric-
The whole truth, please.
"Survival in the USA is high on a global scale but varies quite widely among individual states as well as between blacks and whites within the USA," he tells WebMD.
The highest survival rates were found in the U.S. for breast and prostate cancer, in Japan for colon and rectal cancers in men, and in France for colon and rectal cancers in women, Coleman's team reports.

In Canada and Australia, survival was also high for most cancers.
The highest survival rates were found in the U.S. for breast and prostate cancer, in Japan for colon and rectal cancers in men, and in France for colon and rectal cancers in women, Coleman's team reports.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:04 PM

. . and even more whole truth

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:09 PM

(but let's not get sidetracked as we have been for a thousand posts now.) Single payer / NHS is NOT an option and never was. Public option and its possible betrayal is the main issue. Promised reform versus de facto incrementalism (which is what got us to where we are) is an issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:16 PM

I didn't even know that Wyden-Bennett was out there as a contender. Destruction of the employment based model is Reform. Public Option is Reform. They are not mutally exclusive - they are highly compatible.

(Employer mandates and insurer mandates are incrementalism. Don't let's be fooled by naming games.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 06:27 PM

Don't be sold an 80's Chrysler with photovoltaics glued to the roof and labeled as a "Green Car," because that is exactly the path we are currently on.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 07:02 PM

Insurers don't want destruction of the employer based model because then they have a middleman with deep pockets, and aren't directly responsible to you. They also have the unfathomable protections of ERISA that allow them to mess with you with IMPUNITY (while you don't get to shop around) - That's how they deny care and cancel coverage even while you are with the same employer but expensively sick. There is an entire employee benfits industry which of course doesn't want this system wrecked.

The Democrats behind Obama are not being candid about this. They have already made the Devils' deal in an attempt to get support from those industries.

With a public option safety net for those people who run afoul of the employer-based coverage, those insurers would then be faced with recovery experts from the government to enforce their requirements, instead of leaving a sick person in financial crisis to do the fighting. That's even without destrying the employment-based status quo. If you destroy that as well with people having a myriad of DIRECT purchase options AND a public ption to choose from, we would have very serious reform.

Nobody is offering that to us. Yet?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 07:20 PM

""Does anyone think that given the choice--Private Insurance or Universal Health Care--that people would willingly choose to keep their private insurance? OK, even if ya have LOTSA money, do you really want to give an insurance company thousands a year when you could give $1000/year?""

Still happens in the UK Bruce, and here it's the difference between paying private insurance, and paying nothing at all.

Of course, the private insurance still won't pay out on pre-existing, and long term, conditions, so even those who choose private care have to go to the NHS for those.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 07:57 PM

Without a single payer system, this is what a reform template looks like.

If you really want reform, you would demand that your Representative tell Congress to start over, with this as the starting point. (It's flaws are all fix-able at a price which can be determined by the experts.)

The public option can be the fix for the Medicaid concerns raised in the article.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 08:01 PM

""Other developed nations were able to start anew without pre-existing conditions.""

Rig, are you telling us you are stupid enough to believe the above nonsense?

Do you really believe that prior to 1948, the UK had NO sick citizens, no poor citizens, and NO moneygrabbing shysters?

Of course there were pre-existing issues which had to be dealt with on the road to civilised treatment for ALL.

We had people like you, who screamed because they might have to contribute a few pence of their taxes to help those less fortunate.

Where are they now?.....Well they are enjoying a generally healthy retirement, at an age they would not have reached pre NHS, and it is funded by the contributions of the next generation, many of whom are the dreaded "immigrants" who seem to inspire your kind to transports of righteous rage, if they need treatment.

The USA will never be fully civilised until its citizens become aware of, and responsive to, the needs of their countrymen whatever their financial status, or ethnic origin.

I can go anywhere in my country, and walk through a gate, and up the drive to the house, and knock at the door without the slightest possibility of being shot by the owner.

The whole of Britain is laced with a network of mostly unfenced footpaths across privately owned land, and provided no damage is caused to crops or livestock, and walkers stick to the paths, there is no objection from the owners.

We treat our people with a degree of respect and trust unknown in the USA. We don't kill them for trespassing, and we DON'T let them die for lack of the means to get treatment.

Maybe Rig, it's YOU that needs to re-assess YOUR hard wired prejudice, and think for yourself instead of swallowing what vested interests tell you.

Otherwise you are just another American mushroom, kept in the dark, and fed on bullshit.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 08:06 PM

Of course there is a difference in that BUPA is said to be a non-profit organisation (the initials stand for "British United Provident Association"), with any surplus ploughed back into services.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 08:08 PM

Well, Don, I figure those folks have the money to do so. I don't begrudge that at all. I simply don't understand the American view that 'as long as I have mine the rest don't matter'. Makes me sick to my stomach.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 29 Aug 09 - 09:34 PM

"Rig, are you telling us you are stupid enough to believe the above nonsense?"

             Don, you've convinced me we need to do something about mental health in this country. You need treatment!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 05:17 AM

Don is right - except that the minor highways network inlcudes not nly footpaths, but also bridleways, RUPPS and BOATS. A RUPP is a "Road Used as a Public Path" and a BOAT is a "Byway Open to AL Traffic". Regrettably RUPPS and BOATS, which may carry and do carry (respectively) vehicular rights of highway, have been under attack by ignorant presure groups and opportunist landowners for 50 years and users' rights are being diminished.

I am however waiting to see evidnece of heric's strange claim that non-US posters do not understand the US system.

What is there necessarily to understand apart from "pay or die"? In some cases it's "pay now": in some cases "pay later"; and there is some tinkering at the zero income end of the scale and the old age end of the scale.

The fact that the US system is universally feared can be gathered from the health insurance industry. ALL (as far as I know) non-US systems either exlude cover in the USA or insist on substantial extra premiums for those visiting the USA.

Ironically, parts of the political spectrum that want Americans to continue paying through the nose for or in case of illness, and to retain an "employer based" model (handy, that, for workforce mobility, not) are te same parts that attacked the Chrysler practices of paying for retirement plans and health plans as "too expensive". So how come private health and pensions are too dear for Chrysler but affordable for middle and lower Americans?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 06:02 AM

""Don, you've convinced me we need to do something about mental health in this country. You need treatment!""

Thanks pal, that assessment coming from YOU, convinces me that I am sane.

If however I did need treatment, it wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg to get it. In fact it wouldn't cost me a penny.

HOW ABOUT YOU, MUSHROOM MAN?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:26 AM

"If however I did need treatment... it wouldn't cost me a penny."
                     How would you know?


   The only point I was trying to make is, in order to reorganize the American healthcare system one would have to analyze the situation as it exists now. Otherwise, it seems to me, any efforts to "fix it," will most certainly fail.

   One of the first things that would have to be done would be to define who it is you intend to cover. I don't see anyway you would get any cooperation at all from the people who have insurance now until you at least did that.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:44 AM

I don't know why anyone would think that the people who are involved with writing the various bills in the House and Senate haven't already examined the situation as it exists now, and aren't already working out who would be covered. This is precisely what they are and have been doing, so those are non-arguments.

I would add to the "pay or die" equation, also "pay and die", since insurance companies regularly deny needed care to people who have already paid them to be covered.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 09:46 AM

Er - people who need treatment.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 10:16 AM

And that's one of the problems, Richard. There are people who need treatment who are illegaly living in the US now, and there are people who aren't living there yet, but would be if they thought all they had to do was to sneak in to get treatment. The American tax payer can't afford to provide health care for every sick person in the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 10:57 AM

Canada has a universal health care system, Rig. We do not treat everyone in the world. That's because to get treatment here you must first present your government-issued health card, a standard piece of personal I.D. that every Canadian citizen carries, just like they carry their driver's license or their bank card. Health cards have not proven easy to counterfeit, as they are made in such a way as to prevent it being at all easy.

There is your solution, Rig. No problem at all, in fact.

In emergencies, however, like the aftermath of a car accident, health care would certainly be provided to a non-resident of this country, as it would simply be criminal not to do so. We are all human beings, after all. That should be kept in mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: bobad
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:02 AM

Just to add to LH's post, any non-resident can receive health care in Canada but they are billed for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:09 AM

Well, LH, so far it hasn't worked that way in the US, and that's what has people so nervous. In California, for instance, the state provided avenues for illegal aliens to receive public health care and it drove the state into insolvency. Americans are more prone to look at the California experience than the Canadian one.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:35 AM

Maybe it hasn't worked that way so far in the USA, Rig, because the powers that be would actually like the situation to be inconsistent and complicated and unfair precisely for the purpose of making Americans angry and reactive and confused, and keeping them suspicious about the possibilities of bringing in a socialist universal health care system.

If so, their plan to block reform of a very bad system has succeeded rather well, hasn't it?

The Health Insurance companies and Big Pharma want you to fear change, so why wouldn't they do everything in their power to keep Americans ignorant of elegantly simple solutions to seemingly complex problems...problems that are to the insurance companies' advantage?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 11:40 AM

Weren't there other reasons why California went into insolvency.?

Is there really some built-in incompetance in the American political system that makes it incapable of doing things that other countries can manage to do without great difficulty?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 12:03 PM

Yes, McGrath - capitalism and the ability to block budgets for single issue reasons.

As for Californian health, the solution would be simple. Integrate illegal aliens so that they pay tax. Voila! Funding!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 12:31 PM

A lot of illegal aliens do pay taxes already.

I think another good way to raise money for health care would be to legalize pot and regulate and tax it. That would also have the side benefit of reducing the cost of maintaining our prison system. But that would make too much sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 12:44 PM

It would also enable regulating the strength

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Emma B
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 01:07 PM

may I quote from
'An Urgent Message From the League of American Voters'

"The message I have for you today is simple: we must stop Obama Care and we CANNOT let our guard down.

Just over two weeks ago the League of American Voters launched its national campaign to stop Obama Care.

In short order, our powerful ad featuring a respected medical doctor exposing the dangers of Obama Care have supporters of the Obama plan reeling.

We must continue this battle.

As I write this, the League has to firm up its TV ad buys for the next two weeks. We have already raised over $1.3 million. But we need to raise $5 million to kill off Obama Care.

P.S. The New York Times reported that liberal groups backing Obama Care are outspending groups like ours 3 to 1. Yet we are still winning the war of public opinion. This means when the public finds out the truth, they are siding with us. We just need to keep doing our work and getting our ads out"


- Oh well, good to know all that money is going somewhere really useful unlike medical treatment for the uninsured

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Emma B
Date: 30 Aug 09 - 01:39 PM

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