Finally, my LTE.
I just e-mailed it. I am farily confident that it will be published, if only because it compares well to some of their stuff. No doubt it'll be heavily edited, but on occasion they publish entire diatribes!
Re: "City woman recruited by health-plan foes in U.S."
Thank you Hamilton Spectator for publishing the article about Shona Holme – I would like to let the readers know about some additional information I came across with just a few clicks of the mouse.
In 2007, the Mayo Clinic decided to print Shona Holme’s human interest story in an internal Clinic publication. It served as a dig against the growing call for Public Healthcare in the U.S. by painting the Canadian system in a negative light. The story was reprinted this summer on Mayoclinic.org.
A story by Julie Mason in the July 12 Ottawa Citizen provides more info:
"....... So I decided to check a little further. On the Mayo Clinic's website, Shona Holmes is a success story. But it's somewhat different story than all the headlines might have implied. Holmes' "brain tumour" was actually a Rathke's Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland. To quote an American source, the John Wayne Cancer Center, "Rathke's Cleft Cysts are not true tumors or neoplasms; instead they are benign cysts.
There's no doubt Holmes had a problem that needed treatment, and she was given appointments with the appropriate specialists in Ontario. She chose not to wait the few months to see them. But it's a far cry from the life-or-death picture portrayed by Holmes on the TV ads or by (Senator Mitch) McConnell in his attacks".
So much for "I'd be dead" - all she's really saying is that rich people or people willing to mortgage their house get treated faster on a cash basis at the Mayo Clinic.
The people who have made Shona the "biggest ticket in Washington" have deep pockets. The people she is fighting against; people like her, do not. The Republican plan for health care for the uninsured is "there’s always the emergency room".
Her commercial is disingenuous at best. Shona’s message to Americans is "Don't let them take your rights away". 46 million people in the States have no medical insurance, and many millions more are woefully under-insured. They need employment to have insurance, or deep reserves to pay the outrageous rates to maintain so called COBRA coverage – between $500 to $1,000 monthly, for a single person! That is what this debate is about; the right to have medical health care access not based solely on financial ability to obtain medical insurance.
The biggest irony in her story is this: there's not a chance that any US insurer would cover her now that she has a pre-existing condition. And she would then become unemployable to boot, in all jobs except those not offering health insurance.
Shona says, "No one should be forced to travel thousands of miles to obtain accessible good care. Yet that is exactly what I was forced to do after being diagnosed with a brain tumor three years ago."
According to an article in the May/June 2009 National Geographic Traveler magazine, that is exactly what many Americans are forced to do. The article "Medical Tourism Takes Off" by John Rosenthal, relates how many people are going to other countries, some as far away as India, South Africa and the Philippines to get medical care, including surgery. The costs for the travel expenses and the medical treatment are often a fraction of the cost that the same medical treatment would be in the US. One case mentioned in the article is that of a 58 year old Michigan man who was diagnosed to have an aortic aneurysm. His local hospital said that it would cost him $450,000 to repair it, but since he didn't have medical insurance, he couldn't afford the surgery. The man checked out alternatives with medical tourism associations, and ended up flying to India and having the procedure for $9,000. ...some 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical procedures in 2007...That number is expected to reach six million by 2010..."
Even people with insurance are not necessarily covered: last week the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee pledged support of and offered condolences to the family of Nataline Sarkysian, and blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for the 17-year-old, who tragically died just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry.
This is how dire the current American health care situation is:
46 million Americans under the age of 65 (which represents 18 percent of the population) had no health insurance in 2007. And given the spike in the unemployment rate and downturn in the economy since then, that figure is probably much higher now.
In the United States, medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
2.4 trillion dollars were spent on health care in 2008, representing 17 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product.
The US spends more money per person on health care than nations that provide universal coverage to their citizens. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development points out that health care spending was only 10.9 percent of the gross domestic product in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, all countries that provide single-payer health care.
The right wing conservatives on both sides of the border have a lot to gain by making sure there is a public perception out there that the Canadian system is broken. No wonder Judy Wasylycia-Leis has not had a response from Ottawa to speak out against anti-Canadian propaganda. It would not be a priority for our current Prime Minister.
Shona Holmes is not on the right side in this debate. As a final note, I would like to know if she is receiving financial compensation for these ads, and appearances on Faux News, whihc I note is home to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.