What Danny Williams’s head told Danny Williams about Danny Williams’s heart

An editorial in today’s New York Post picks up the theme of my entry yesterday, “Another leftist paradise exposed.” As though Divine Providence had a sense of humor and were coming to our assistance, right in the middle of the left’s revolutionary attempt to put the entire U.S. health care industry under the control of the federal government, a top official of the country to our north, the country that is the beau ideal of all progressives, the country that the whole right (i.e. left)-thinking world tells us we must emulate when it comes to health care if we want to stop being cavemen, has chosen, when it comes to HIS OWN health care, to seek heart surgery in the Neanderthal U.S. of A.

Oh (no) Canada
February 3, 2010

You’ve heard the mantra, chanted by everyone on the left, from Michael Moore to The New York Times: America’s profit-centric health-care system is dismally inferior to that of Canada’s purely pristine humanitarian-driven version.

Indeed, the central theme of Moore’s 2007 “documentary” film, “Sicko,” was that Canada—with its universal, government-run and taxpayer-funded “free” health care—is a medical paradise.

And a Times editorial last August glowingly declared: “Contrary to what one hears in political discourse, the bulk of the research comparing the United States and Canada found a higher quality of care in our northern neighbor.”

Well, tell that to Danny Williams, premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The popular 59-year-old politician has discovered that nothing is for free. He’s somewhere in the US today—prepping for heart surgery.

Seems the procedure he needs simply isn’t available in Newfoundland—at any price.

And, with his own health on the line, he prefers to put his trust in the “second-rate, profit-driven health-care behemoth” south of the St. Lawrence, rather than try a hospital in Canada.

“Ultimately, we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health,” said Williams’ deputy premier, “and he has taken medical advice from a number of different sources,”

Williams, he added, “is doing what’s best for him.”

Precisely.

Last summer, President Obama—who still hopes to overhaul American health-care—defended the Canadian system as one that “works for Canada.”

Not for all Canadians, apparently.

Certainly not those well-connected pols, who—like Danny Williams—can afford better health care in the good ol’ US of A.

Get well soon, Danny.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2010 07:26 PM | Send