Interesting statistic

The number of Americans who lose their healthcare insurance every day: 14,000.

The number of Canadians? None.

More on Shona Holmes

Shona Holmes has received notoriety in recent days for doing a commercial for an American lobby group in which she claims that she had a brain tumour that threatened her life, that her treatment was delayed in Ontario, and that she had to pay for her own treatment:

"I am a Canadian citizen, and as my brain tumour [sic] got worse, my government health-care system told me I had to wait six months to see a specialist," Holmes says in the commercial. "In six months I would have died."

She is suing the Ontario government for her costs.

Her story, however, is quickly falling apart. She did not have a tumour, but a cyst, as her testimonial at the Mayo clinic shows (link; archive). And, it seems, it was her vision that was threatened, not her life.

So what's the deal? Was Ms. Holmes confused about her own diagnosis and prognosis? This is, I'm afraid, not likely.

Creative Revolution points out that Shona Holme's lawsuit is being funded by the Canadian Constitution Federation, a political advocacy group that funds right-wing legal challenges (they were profiled in the Toronto Star). The CCF's wikipedia article has recently been scrubbed, but if you know the right people you can see both the original article and all of the edits that produced it. Here is what was added on 13 June 2008 by user jamesmclean23:

Who is jamesmclean23? Creative Revolution points out that there is a James Mclean who is co-author of a CCF study, and in the June 2008 CCF newsletter (pdf), a James McLean is described as a CCF staff researcher, at exactly the time the above edits were made to wikipedia article.

The point? A staff-member of the group funding Shona Holmes' lawsuit against the province of Ontario wrote of Holmes' prognosis thus (my emphasis in red):

Shona Holmes was told she would lose her vision forever, unless surgeons immediately removed her growing brain tumour. But Ontario's government monopoly health care system told Shona whe would have to wait for months just to see specialists and obtain treatment. Not willing to risk permanent blindness, Shona obtained surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Within ten days, her vision was completely restored.

Given that the only way Mr. McLean would know what Shona Holmes was told was from Ms. Holmes herself, we have here a serious discrepancy, since this is not the story that Holmes told Americans, where she claimed to be facing death, not blindness.

Crossing the border for health care

No, not that border. Our neighbour's other one. According to UCLA researchers a million Californians cross the border to Mexico for health care each year.

The study by the school's Center for Health Policy Research, published Tuesday in the journal Medical Care, affirms what has long been suspected – that the untamable cost of medicine is forcing many, particularly Latino immigrants, to look outside California for medical and dental care. As casualties from the recession rise and as budget-strapped government programs eliminate health services, more people are expected to head south to fill prescriptions, get teeth fixed or undergo care for chronic illnesses.

According to the study, at least 952,000 California adults – 488,000 of them described by the study as Mexican immigrants and about a quarter as non-Latino whites – head south annually for their medical, dental and prescription services.

Universal health insurance and entrepreneurship

Washington Monthly has an interesting article on entrepreneurship and universal health care.  Universal health insurance, far from suppressing entrepreneurs, could be a boon to it.

The main reason for this is a phenomenon known as "job lock," a term coined during the last round of debate over universal health coverage in the early 1990s. Job lock refers to the fact that workers are often unwilling to leave a current job that provides health insurance for another position that might not, even if they would be more productive in that other position. This is because employer-provided insurance is traditionally the only reliable form of fairly priced private insurance coverage available in the U.S. The alternative is to purchase insurance in the nongroup market, where insurance prices and availability are typically not regulated, so insurance companies can drop individuals when they become ill or charge them exorbitant prices. As a result, individuals feel "locked" into less productive jobs.

Over the past fifteen years, dozens of studies have documented the detrimental impact that job lock has on the economy.

Waiting lists grow in American clinics

The Washington Post has an interesting story on the effects of the recession on a clinic in North Carolina.

Just six months ago, the clinic delivered same-day care to most callers, the gold standard from a health perspective. But in October the delays crept to four days, then 19 in November and 25 in December. In January, HealthServe temporarily stopped accepting new patients, and almost immediately 380 people put their names on a waiting list for when the crunch eases.

The problem?

In the past two years, North Carolina's number of uninsured has climbed 22.5 percent, the biggest jump in the nation, according to an analysis by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, a quasi-state agency. Nationwide, about 22 percent of adults do not have health insurance. Here in North Carolina, 25 percent of adults -- or 1.8 million people -- have no coverage. An additional 9 percent are underinsured.

For most Americans, health insurance and employment are linked. Every 1 percent increase in the jobless rate translates into 1.1 million people losing coverage nationally.

Canada's system, much pilloried by the fabulists of the right, doesn't look so bad now, does it?