FoxNews really doesn’t want the President’s health care plan to go through. Again they’re having a story showing the evils of ‘socialized medicine’ by showing how long it is for someone to get health care. This time the focus is on Canada, but they have done stories on health care in France and the UK. All of them conclude that health care is something difficult to get, but like with any newscast, especially one where the reporter is going undercover, a closer examination needs to be taken into account.

On the recent broadcast talking about the Canadian system, there wasn’t a mention on the broadcast which province they were in. According to information I have seen on the subject, depending on the province can determine the type of care you get, at least in the admitting phase. The reporter that went undercover talked about how the first thing he did was meet with a triage nurse and was told he had to wait after she determined the type of care he needed.

It was never said, in the interview that was done, what was the ailment he purported to have, we weren’t told if it was made up or an actual condition nor did we find out was he in a clinic or an actual hospital.

They are all little things that can change the outcome considerably. If he went in trying to fake a condition and the nurse couldn’t see any symptoms, then why would he be put in the front of the line? It would make sense if he had no distressing conditions he would be told to wait while people with more pressing needs are helped. People talk about how universal health care will clog the system, using examples like the Canadian expose, but they don’t look at the bigger picture.

A cold hard fact has to do with cost and the amount of care given relative to the possibility for success. I remember stories from the late 80’s or 90’s about certain stars; David Crosby comes to mind, who needed transplants of some sort. Crosby is one that sticks out because he needed a liver transplant. There was some uproar in the public, a vocal minority, who felt the transplant was a waste of time because of his hard drinking and partying times. They said all that would happen is he would get the liver and a few years later he would be in the same condition. It would be better if the liver went to someone who could have a good chance of survival, they said.

In the end Crosby got the transplant and all went well, but the people arguing that he shouldn’t have received the transplant did what doctors would have to do about choice. In the report done on FoxNews, the usual argument came up about cost and taxes. The situation is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have a system where you want everyone to get the same amount of care but you don’t want to pay for it. The reason why health care has to be rationed is because Americans, for the most part, act like spoiled children and want things free. The Canadian with the fake condition wanted to be helped right away, but complained a few sentences later that taxes were too high for the care that he got, forgetting that if more was paid into the system, more people could be hired to assist and then help with the plan. Maybe if the person had his own physician he could have scheduled an appointment for preventative measures. The last part is tough to know for sure because we didn’t know what ailment he had.

Right now people, in a lot of cases, don’t take health care seriously because of cost. When I had insurance at my job, each visit to the doctor was $25 out of pocket, but the real cost was over $100. I had an x-ray that had to be done, which I paid $4 but was another $100 in real cost. Because insurance paid for most of it I just let the doctor tell me what needed to be done, but without insurance, I don’t know if I would even go to the doctor. With my new health crisis, where I have to check my glucose levels four times a day, I’m buying the generic products or I’m skipping times. I haven’t seen a doctor because to do so would cost $100 just to check under the hood. For all I know I might need insulin to manage things for a bit, but I can’t afford the shots. That, ultimately, could make things worse, but economically that’s what I can afford to do at this time.