Brock Lesnar, the cage-fighting heavyweight champion of the UFC, got released from a North Dakota hospital after an eleven-day stay. A microscopic bacteria succeded in felling the surly giant where 250-pound men had failed. Aiding and abetting that bacterial infection, Lesnar's friend and chiropractor Larry Novotny claims, is Canadian health care. Lesnar first fell ill while on vacation in the Great White North. "His symptoms became severe while in Canada, which because their health care system made it difficult to manage," the friend of Lesnar's explained to a Minnesota television station. "And at this point it's a possibility that it could jeopardize his career." At least Lesnar could venture south to get the quality care he needed. Where will people go when ObamaCare passes, and the United States of America becomes, on health care at least, the United States of Canada?

There are thousands of stories in the big city.

Mark Steyn is fond of anecdotes about his native Canada's alleged healthcare system. Mostly that people don't get cured (and often times not seen) under their system (thank you to another way left nut Pierre Trudeau) and come south to Burlington Vermont or further to Boston where we have some of the most advances medical care on the planet. He also speaks frequently about when his elderly English Father goes to hospital in that country, he ALWAYS comes away with a staph or other infection related to cost cutting on things as simple basic cleanliness and sanitation issues.

It's true: if Obama and his way left crazies ever complete their coup to takeover healthcare, where will people go to get good services?

hey Dan, i though you didnt follow the mma.

I follow MMA. I just prefer boxing to it.

Funny how your article makes no explanation to the argument you are trying to make. How about some example or proof... otherwise it is flaccid. And how do we know this wasn't an isolated incident not at all tied to the system, but maybe a single doctor?

What about all the systemic administration of the wrong drugs here in the states? THAT is a serious problem. Or doctors operating on the wrong body parts, or leaving stuff inside of surgery patients. You fail to mention a lot, and you know it. You are no better than Faux News.

Yes, and none of that ineptatude will ever happen under government healthcare. Right?

Why don't we just start paying more attention, eh?

asdf, that's not the question... it is idiotic to assume that these errors are caused by or not caused by 'government run' h/c, or to infer that these would/wouldn't happen. That is not at all what I'm talking about. I'm challenging any of you to explain the government's role in this particular case being used.

Until then, you are as flaccid as your arguments.

I don't know about this particular case, but here are some things I do know about the socialist medicine systems in Canada and other states that practice it (For my time's sake, I'll just cut and paste from something I helped write in a few places elsewhere):

• Long waits for medical care are customary in Canada and sometimes result in the death of the patient before they can see a doctor.
• In Toronto, overcrowding one day forced hospitals to turn away ambulances at 23 of the city’s 25 hospitals.
• A 58-year-old woman, who had been waiting for open-heart surgery for five years, spent the night prior to her surgery on a gurney in the hallway of the hospital.
• 66 other patients, spending the night in the same hallway, joined her.
• In Vancouver, some reports state that delays are so serious that 20% of heart attack patients, who need treatment within 15 minutes, are forced to wait one hour or longer.
It turns out many Canadian doctors are actually urging their patients to go to the United States for treatment.
It may surprise you, however, to hear that in Canada there are no problems or long waits for dental care or veterinary care. That’s because neither of these services has been taken over by government and both allow for private treatment. In fact, some Canadians who need MRIs are actually going to their local vet clinic in order to get them done right away.

• The BBC reported that in September 2006 more than 6,000 patients in eastern England had to wait more than 20 weeks to begin treatment already prescribed by their doctors.
• Other press stories told about cancer patients who were denied access to life-saving cancer drugs by the government, which refused to make them available because they were not “cost-effective,” according to the British National Health Service.
• In Britain today, roughly 40 % of cancer patients never get to see an oncology specialist. Delays in getting treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon-cancer cases considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered.
• A BBC story from 2006 reported that over 40,000 patients in Wales had to wait more than six months to have a simple outpatient appointment

o Norfolk, England: 75-year-old Edward Atkinson, who has crippling arthritis, was removed from a hip-replacement waiting list by a government-run hospital because he mailed pro-life literature to the hospital’s CEO. The CEO claims it is “our right to decline treatment to him” and says the hospital will continue to deny treatment to Atkinson for anything that is not life-threatening because the literature upset hospital staff and “we have a duty to care for our staff.” The hospital stuck to its guns even after intervention on Atkinson’s behalf by a Member of Parliament and widespread criticism of its actions throughout Britain.
o Wokingham, England: Mother-of-three Claire McDonnell, 33, was refused the drug Herceptin for her aggressive form of breast cancer because of its cost. Yet the same health system paid to have 57-year-old Tanya Bainbridge’s tattoos removed so Bainbridge can look more attractive in sleeveless dresses. The health system paid 20,000 pounds to turn Bainbridge, formerly named Brian, into a woman. The cost of the tattoo removal is roughly the same as the cost of the drug McDonnell was denied.
o London, England: Airport worker Dunil Almeida died because National Health Service doctors failed to diagnose his disease after fifty hospital visits. For 18 months, Almeida suffered from agonizing stomach pains and eventually lost 56 pounds, but British doctors had no clue he was suffering from bowel cancer. While visiting family in Sri Lanka, Almeida visited a hospital – just once – and received the correct diagnosis, but by then the cancer had advanced. Almeida died within weeks.
o Saskatchewan, Canada: Parents of 18-month-old Paige Hansen – who stopped walking, developed swollen limbs and screamed in pain – were told by government health care workers they would have to wait three weeks for a bone scan for their daughter. Mrs. Hansen said, “I begged and pleaded and cried on the phone to this person, crying as my child is crying in the background.” But the answer was no. The Hansens took their daughter to another city, where she was diagnosed with leukemia.
o Taupaki, New Zealand: Twenty years ago, Colin Marchant missed an operation to remove his varicose veins due to a shortage of anesthetists. He’s been waiting for the public health system to give him another chance at that operation ever since. The wait has been like sitting on a ticking time bomb. You see, Marchant is prone to blood clots. The varicose veins have contributed to the development of potentially fatal clots in his left leg.
These stories are bad enough. But it gets worse.
In Canada, the government deems it illegal to seek private health care services, yet the Canadian Supreme Court in June 2005 ruled that the health system was so bad it actually violates the basic human rights of Canadians.
No wonder: 12 percent of Canadian physicians and four percent of nurses believe they have had patients die due to health care waiting lines.
As one frustrated commenter on a Canadian website quipped: “I've always heard that the natural end result of socialism is the government killing its citizens. I just never suspected they'd be so passive-aggressive about it and just let the waiting lists do it.”
Nationalized medicine kills. Here are just a few statistics ...
o One-third of women in Germany and France and one-half of women in Britain and New Zealand diagnosed with breast cancer die from it. By contrast, about one-fifth of American women diagnosed with breast cancer die from it.
o One-quarter of Canadian men and one-half of British men diagnosed with prostate cancer die from it. Less than one-fifth of American men diagnosed with the disease die from it.
o In Scotland, 462,000 people have died as a result of “health service failings” between 1974 and 2003 – this in a nation of only 5 million people!
o Britons with serious illnesses are seven times more likely to die from them than are Americans with such conditions. Britons are also four times more likely to die during major surgery than Americans.
o 90,000 people in New Zealand (about 2.2% of the country’s entire population), 900,000 in Canada (2.7% of Canada’s total population), and 1,000,000 people in Great Britain (about 1.7% of the total population) were on waiting lists to get into a hospital in 2005.
o Only half as many Canadians and only a third as many Britons as Americans get kidney dialysis, per capita.
o In New Zealand, the government has withheld kidney dialysis for patients over 75.
o The American rate of coronary bypass surgery is 3 to 4 times what it is in Canada and 5 times what it is in Britain.

hello

whoopsie, sorry hit the `post' button by accident...

starting over -

Daniel, just came upon your site recently although I read your very fine book `Why the Left...' some years ago.

I'm afraid, though, I really must object to your characteritization of Canadian state-run health care as a reason behind the illness of this fighter.

A couple of things:
First, as a foreigner (I presume, I know nothing about this person), it would be difficult for him to get health-care anywhere in Canada, in any case...

I would expect that, as a Canadian, I would find it very difficult to obtain health care, at least on an emergency basis, if I was admitted to an American private hospital. The attending medical personnel would look at my credentials and say, `Mmmm... he's from Ontario. He could just skip out on paying...'

Which leads me to my second point: did this person not get Blue Cross? When I travel outside the country, I always obtain travellers' insurance, just so I don't have to worry about the scenario above.

by all means, oppose government takeover of health care in the U.S.; but I don't think its very kosher to blame Canada on such thin evidence.

"... it is idiotic to assume that these errors are caused by or not caused by 'government run' h/c, or to infer that these would/wouldn't happen."

Not idiotic at all to recognize that government run anything will be substandard. It's the nature of bureaucracies and the beast.

There are issues in both systems, no doubt. But there should be no argument with the fact that the United States has the best healthcare and facilities on the planet. Although I'm sure you can come up with example like Switzerland that has a small homogeneous population that might show it slightly better statistically. And on the whole, Obama and his minions of way lefties in Congress are working to screw up a good system.

The facts remain that people come from all over the world to get fixed up here in America.

And so what if they didn't? We still have some of the best recovery rates in the world for some of the most serious conditions and contrary to what we hear, NOBODY is turned away who absolutely needs medical treatment. I'm ok with that. Especially considering how the Government runs anything, national RATIONED healthcare will be an abomination, will be expensive and will literally kill people all in the name of government control.

Btw - do you have and issue with flaccidity?

There is certainly some question about the Constitutionality of our elected leadership pushing Reid's healthcare bill to completion and making it a criminal offense for those not conforming to its coverage mandates, but to take it further, to work a $100 Million bribe into the legislation to buy the likes of Sen. Mary Landreiu is downright illegal on its face. And these jokers are not even hiding the fact! Can you say ‘Imperial Congress’?

asdf, I've noticed that Politicians tend to care about the Constitution only when it benefits them. Other than that, they tend to ignore it. The facxt is, the many states, and we the people, have allowed the Federal Gov't to usurp powers that were the State's, or the people's. Short of a major upheaval, it's only going to get worse.

Texas seems the be the only state squawking about 10th Amendment Rights and concerned that the Federal Government is too big, too powerful and is holding its thumb down on individual state's rights. Other than that, I agree that most states have forgotten about maintaining their own sovereignty and independence and have succumbed to the Feds.

I'll take a SWAG that most states have given up freedoms to be taken in under the umbrella of Federal largesse.

We are living in very dangerous times here and seem to have very little sway over the elite power structure that are playing by their own rules and don't seem to be concerned that they are flushing this country down the toilet.

For Obama and his band of anti-American globalists, it all seems to be going according to plan.