If you’d like, I’ll come over and read it to him. And give him a creepy massage.

I heart universal healthcare. When my sister was 13, she came down with a sudden headache accompanied by vomiting and partial blindness. Turned out she had a brain tumour that was hemorrhaging, and she had to go in for emergency surgery. Pretty major stuff. We thought we were going to lose her, which was quite enough to worry about without stressing over how we’d pay for it. My dad does ok financially, but he’s self-employed; I imagine that he wouldn’t have had the kind of insurance to cover the cost of a major brain surgery, plus all of the treatments/therapy that followed for years.

To me, universal healthcare is a no-brainer (too soon?).

Just kidding Chet.

Our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is our most right-wing, global-warming-is-a-myth, lock-up-all-petty-drug-criminals, the-free-market-rules Prime Minister in years. Yet the one thing he will never mention in public is screwing with health care. It would be political suicide.

A couple years ago the CBC (national TV network) did a nation-wide poll to pick the Greatest Canadian. We didn’t choose Wayne Gretzky or our first Prime Minister or the author of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We didn’t even choose the snowboarder who won a gold medal and tested positive for pot.

Nope, the guy we picked was the leader of a fairly unpopulated province called Saskatchewan (think North Dakota, but flatter, less people and colder) from 1940′s – 1960′s. He went from that position to the leader of our third place party in the federal government. His name was Tommy Douglas. What did Tommy Douglas do that was so important in the minds of Canadians? Mr. Douglas brought universal medicare to Saskatchewan, which was later followed by the entire country. The Greatest Canadian.

The whole healthcare system is a zero sum game. If we want to make it cheaper, get rid of the insurance companies or offer some serious competition (public option please)…

Hey, it’s Paul. Thanks for your patience with an admittedly herky-jerky first day. We’re working on some of the, er, bugs.

Russell – That’s the point. Universal health care, provided by the government, doesn’t come through your employer. You get health care whether you have a job or not. And it’s paid for by your taxes. (Another insidious part, that people forget: Even if the tax rate went up, people wouldn’t be paying for health care, so would have money with which to pay those taxes. For those that say they’re getting “free” health care from their employers…you’re not thinking straight. If it’s a part of your compensation, you’re, in essence, paying for it. It’s not like your employer is providing it out of the goodness of its cold heart.

citizen – It was the Rioja. ;)

Jason, Rudy – Thanks.

Brooke – Well, yeah. I’ve lived in Russia. I know of what you speak. But advocating a Russian health care system would be like advocating a Rwandan policy on human rights.

Thanks, everyone, for reading.