Anecdotes don't work (Canadian vs. U.S. Healthcare)

I posted a blurb on Facebook that I want single payer universal health care in the U.S.

In response, my aunts long term boyfriend posted a link to an article about a Stage IV cancer patient who didn’t respond to the recommended drugs. And then he posted another where he plays golf in Florida with someone from Canada.

I’m sorry but two anecdotes do not make it true. Hell, if you want I can offer anecdotes too, like Natiline Sarkisyan who died because the U.S. insurance company Cigna only approved the therapy AFTER Sakisyan had died.

And then there’s the gentleman who was the Vice President of Communications for Cigna. His name is Wendell Potter – he wrote a book detailing what Cigna did to try to derail health care reform as well as what the insurance industry did as a whole to discredit Michael Moore’s “Sicko”.

And if you do a simple google search you’ll see thousands of cases here in the United States where people died because the insurance company decided it wasn’t worth paying for them to live.

So if you’re going to offer me anecdotes, do some research first. Find out that the average life expectancy in the United States is worse than in Canada.

Or that for the most part the Canadian and British systems actually work.

Then stop watching Fox News and come back and talk to me.

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