22:53 - 01/21/2010
Differences
My grandbabies had a sleepover with me last night dear diary. Their Dad had to work through the night and their Mom was off on some other commitments. They arrived around supper and left 12 hours later. Fed them first, of course. They watched dvds for a bit while I spent time on the computer preparing for some up-coming assignments. It was a last minute request from my son you see, so I hadn't had time to do what I needed to do before they arrived.
When I was done, I started to read a couple of chapters from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to them. Near the end of the book it was. One chapter was set in the Gringotts Wizards Bank and the next dealt with the escape of the three main characters from that adventure. One of the themes that runs through that part of the story is how different beliefs and expectations can cause conflict between groups even when both have the best intentions to begin with. In this case the wizards define ownership by who has the resources to purchase and, therefore, keep an item forever. The goblins define ownership by who created the same item, expecting it to be returned to the creator at the end of the purchasing wizard's life.
Synchronistically, that theme has been arising in a number of variations in the real world right now. For example, A+ and I watched "Sicko" a week or so ago. I hate to admit it, but I cried through a lot of it. At first I couldn't really decide why it had that effect on me. I have been following the debate in the US around the issue and sometimes have found the arguments incomprehensible. That is because there seems to be a higher value set on the profits that can be made from the business of offering healing rather than on the healing itself. Property ownership - hospitals, meds and technology - and the sale of information (some of which is pretty questionable) seem to have a much higher level of "rights" than the lives of the citizens of the US. Given the words in their constitution, that surprises me. It is almost as though the current power-brokers have turned into the hated regime of the British monarchy of the 1700's where crushing taxes on essentials led to their overthrow by the colonists. Now that same behaviour is being accepted and defended by the current citizens, who seem to accept the power-brokers' assertions that their ownership of the methods of delivering essential health care over-rides the citizens right to life. Can't pay for it - well then die, eh.
Sadly, while Mr Moore was trying very hard to demonstrate that public health care can be delivered to all citizens while still leaving a country prosperous, using the example of Canada's health care system was a concern. You see, when I was volunteering while an at-home Mom, I was often involved in helping to set up services and programs for our communities. The better to support them and the families that populated them. One of the things our committees always did at the beginning of our initiatives was to spend time researching existing services that other communities had created. We would interview the people directly involved in the creation and delivery of the services we wanted to provide. It was, of course, important for us to ask what was positive and working well. However, what saved us the most time, grief and money was asking what mistakes had been made. The creators were always very forth-coming and eager to help us avoid the same mistakes. After all, we could always make new mistakes no one else had yet encountered. I am familiar with the other health care systems mentioned as well and I really hope the US chooses the best from all the existing examples, while avoiding the mistakes that could bog their efforts down, if not addressed first.
Mr. Moore did his interviews for Canada's system in the province of Ontario. What he probably didn't know was that the system there is markedly different from the system in our province, for example. Since the 1980's, political influence had made our provincial system very much closer to the current US pay-as-you-go-or-die system. The legislation and funds governing health care distribution are a federal power in Canada, but the administration of the funds and services is delegated to each provincial government. In the federal Health Care Act one weakness exploited to turn our province's system into a profits before patients system have been the phrases "diagnosed" and "available in the province". The provincial government has simply choked off access to the ability to gain a diagnosis, so of course, very sick people often can't get the treatment they need even though they are guaranteed that care under the federal act, for lack of that diagnosis.
Should some wily citizen have the temerity to gain a credible diagnosis in another jurisdiction - say another province or in a western country like the US - then the next line of defending the funds from a patient's use is to claim that the service exists in some - often very different - form in this province, so that a refusal to pay for the extra-provincial care mandated in the federal governments' legislation is "justified". Two cases in point: One provincial MLA (like a senator,y'all) was diagnosed with a rather rare form of cancer. There was a treatment protocol mandated in this province that had a very poor prognosis for any patient so diagnosed. There was also a very well known medical treatment used in the US that was very effective in curing the sufferer - as long as they had the enormous amount of funds necessary to pay for it themselves. This particular MLA - a Rhodes scholar and independently wealthy - took a stand for bringing our medical standards for this particular ailment up to those in the US. He refused to go for the treatment that would have saved his life unless it was approved for all other Albertans. His death from the cancer was the first thing I heard on the news the day of my birthday a few years back. Our community lost a brilliant and well-respected statesman over the profit-over-people orientation of the power-brokers in this province.
On a more personal note, my mother experienced congestive heart failure caused by arthritis drugs, prescribed for her as the only acceptable treatment by our provincial government, while travelling home through the US from a vacation in Mexico. She was offered the surgery needed to save her life in the US. My parents had paid the extended health insurance to ensure emergency coverage while they travelled, you see. Their request was denied by our government, because the "same" service was available here. The only way the surgery could have been done in the US was if they sold their home and took on considerable leftover debt as well. My Mom didn't want that loss and stress, so they returned to our province. She was booked into to see a heart specialist for assessment of her needs a month later. She died less than two weeks after her return to this province. I didn't have the chance to say good-bye and I will never forgive the politicians who pocketed their baksheesh from the for profit medical profiteers in exchange for her life.
Even more damning for federal counterparts to our provincial MLA's is their choice to deny access or to refuse to pay for to alternate treatments such as herbal remedies from Asia. One of those herbals relieved almost all my Mom's pain and gave her back the mobility she lost with the "approved" drugs that eventually caused her death. You know those drugs - the ones that were eventually taken off the market because they were causing so many deaths as side-effects? But of course government can't allow "unproven" herbal remedies to be used when there is so much money for their campaigns to be had from pharmaceutical companies, is there. Yes I am bitter.
Not long after her death, several other Alberta families who had experienced similar stories/losses sued our provincial government for their breaches of the federal health act and won. The federal government acted at that point, but the provincial politicians have just hidden their dirty work rather than changed it. Right now, for example, most benefits under the act are denied to anyone over 65. My Father now has to pay $1000 per month for care that younger Albertans receive for free. That is not only a violation of the spirit of the health act it is also a violation of the Charter of Rights which states that people cannot be discriminated against on the basis of age, health, geographic location (health care benefits are supposed to be portable across the country), or source of income. Given that the baby boomers are all just entering this demographic I wonder if their demands to cut taxes at the expense of essential services like health and education are going to continue.
I hope federal legislators in the US government take the time to get their public health care system set up so that it is protected from the vultures who are never far away when they feel they can steal from those who cannot advocate for themselves - children, the sick and the elderly. That protection, after all, is the earmark of a enlightened society.
And then there's Haiti. Reports of that tragedy last week triggered memories of the Thailand tsunami a few Christmases back. Another recent docudrama that I cried through, when A+ and I watched it together a few weeks ago. And no, from a values base, that level of suffering should not be the benchmark that our countries use to measure whether we treat our citizens with consideration and care. There is a vast amount of difference between the dramatic and traumatic effects of unpreventable natural disasters, as opposed to the willful and legislated systemic neglect of the most vulnerable in our own communities who are scarred by a thousand small cuts just trying to survive in our societies.
Another example of the issue of differences of values is the new political/social activism phenomenon that may peak over this weekend. In Canada, there is allowance in federal legislation for the suspension of Parliament if emergent circumstances put the country in crisis mode. Apparently our current Prime Minister felt that the emergence of some very unsavory information about his and his cabinet's actions that was irrefutable and strongly supported by evidence from both inside and outside the country and where they could be prosecuted constituted "a national crisis". Guess the Mafia and the Hell's Angels should be a little more aggressive in getting their people elected so they could also invoke prorogation when their criminal activities potentially come under the scrutiny of the courts.
The mainstream media and the political pundits all scoffed and denigrated the actions of Canadian Facebook users who set up a group on it's pages to demand that the duly elected politicians do what they were elected to do - work, that terrible four letter word. What startled, and maybe disconcerted, the power brokers in this scenario - the official conventional communication channels - is that a social networking site has become the new creator and purveyor of political opinion and action. The Prime Minister's approval ratings have plummeted even against a very weak opposition. It isn't the opposition parties leading this digital rebellion - it is citizen advocates finally over-coming the old style censorship of free speech in the mainstream media initiated so many years ago by Conrad Black. You know, the guy in jail for his crimes, not here in Canada, but in the US. The mainstream media and poll-masters have been frantically back-peddling for a couple of weeks now, as the anger and uproar over the deconstruction of our democratic society become increasingly stronger. Demonstrations are set to be held against prorogation this Saturday all across the country. It will be interesting to see if the Prime Minister continues along his dictator-of-the-month path and uses water cannons and riot police to try and hide the level of discontent we normally polite and passive Canadians are expressing. Maybe his visits to China haven't been so much about trade and more about tyranny. We'll see.
Umm, by the way my favourite astrologer cautioned me this week that I would probably express a perspective that other people would deem wrong and that it would likely stir up quite a mare's nest. Oh well. Just goblins and wizards all over again.
I should note, dear diary that I haven't written you for a bit, because some very nice warm weather meant I could manage to increase the assignments I could carry out travelling by my chariot - the bus/train system in our pretty, but rather chilly, city. I still am not making anywhere near enough to cover my bills, but I am hoping not to lose more ground. The assignments at the airport since the attempted terrorist attack Christmas day have meant some very interesting adventures with security. Oh yeah, pat down vs new legal body scanners aka free light porn.
I've also spent time with my Dad and his partner on things technological as well as personal. The last visit, my Dad handed me a cd my brother had made of the written family tree so that I could include it in with the 450+ people already on the on-line version. There are now over 600 family members accounted for, stretching back over more than a couple of centuries from countries all around the world. The most exciting find I had was a curious thing. In my Great-great-grandfather's list of 17 siblings one name was missing from the written version of the tree. Up unitl now I wondered if a "black sheep" had been struck off the family register given the great-great-great grandparents were children of the early 1800's. Could have been something as trivial as attending the "wrong" church or marrying the "wrong" person. Oddly, when I was tracking some clues in the on-line version of the ancestry site, the only sibling I could locate for my great-great grandfather was one brother - Edward. What may have happened was that his birth wasn't properly registered in a major transition of the family. You see, that particular branch emigrated from Portsea in England to New York in the US in the year of Edward's birth. I am guessing he may have been born not long after arriving in the US so was not registered with the rest of his siblings in England nor yet in the land of his birth - the USA. His name showed up in later census records for the US in Nebraska where the family finally settled. That was where I found his name. Curious eh? Another little voice - who likes some drama and intrigue - suggested in the back of my mind that maybe one of the children born in England had some history they didn't want to follow them to their new home and may have changed their name to Edward. Always good to have a little bit of mystery in the family skeleton closet, n'est-ce pas? Sort of like this one in our city's closet - and yes, I did fill out the offending survey.
Finally, A+ and I have spent a lot of time travelling to various malls and office towers to take photos of all the urban artwork contained therein. It ranges from the odd to the sublime, the kitschy to the classic and then some. A tour of the overhead walkways between offices buildings downtown - the Plus 15's, named for their height over the streetscape - netted some really fascinating shots. My only regret was that we couldn't enter some of the business headquarters of the major industry in this town. They have extraordinary art collections that regular citizens never will see. Some of those businesses don't even display what they have; it is just stuck away in jam-packed storerooms. Sigh. Too bad they wouldn't be generous corporate citizens and loan their collections to one of our many public museums. Right now I think it would be up-lifting for everyone's spirits. We also went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie which was uplifting in it's own special way - yay loyalty programs. Anyway time for bed. Grandmothers just don't have the resilience of their former mothering days and I have assignments to do in a few hours. Good night dear diary.
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