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JAN GLIDEWELLCanadians are such nice people.
They come here and spend their money, play good hockey, treat us politely and, outside of jamming up our vending machines with their quarters every once in a while, treat us pretty well.
They generally side with us on international issues.
I once had a very nice vacation taking the train across Canada with the only downside being a threat from my wife on the second day to smother me in my sleep if I used the expression, "Eh?" again.
But every time the people who should be doing something to fix our health care system in the United States are caught obviously not doing so, Canada becomes the Great Satan of health care.
A few years back when Hillary Clinton was presenting her national health care plan, its socialized aspects led to comparisons with Canada's system and an immediate outcry that we were all going to go to socialist hell in a pink-ribboned handbasket for daring to think that health care was a right rather than a privilege. (Note: People who have the privilege are much less likely to see it as a right than those who do not.)
I have spoken to a lot of Canadians, and a lot of Dutch citizens who also have universal health care (and much higher taxes), and most of them are satisfied if not thrilled with their systems. Some, as with any large system, are not.
Now the big concern is prescription drugs.
Florida's disproportionately elderly population is taking a horrendous beating on drug costs, and Canadian discount operations are offering the same drugs at discounts of up to 65 percent.
The Food and Drug Administration has gone on the offensive against such operations and that has some folks madder than hornets.
Sorting out who is responsible isn't that easy. Some blame manufacturers, who point out that they have major research and development and product liability costs.
Some blame the drug store chains, pointing to cases where some drugs have markups as high as 1,400 percent, but, as one industry spokeswoman told me, that presumes that all drugs and the needs of all patients are the same, and that isn't the case. In some instances those high markup drugs might be sharing the burden of making the chains able to provide other drugs where the cost to the chain from the manufacturer is much higher.
Government agencies, eager to intervene with horror stories about mis-filled prescriptions, out-of-date drugs and other problems with out-of-country mail order operations, think they are doing their job. But other arms of government that should be in the business of making things better are busy increasing spending, lowering taxes for the rich and, in Florida, trying to figure out how to duck fulfillment of mandates of a constitutional amendment process gone berserk.
I didn't have to look much further than my own medicine cabinet to see that if I was paying full cost for the seven prescription drugs I take regularly, I, residing comfortably in the middle of the middle class, would be in serious trouble.
And I refuse to accept the accusation that it is somehow un-American of me to think that somehow I and the government that claims to represent me should be doing something for the millions of Americans without some or any medical insurance and without prescription coverage.
We live in a political system where unfulfilled promises are the currency of elections and in a nation where promises to seniors, the poor, veterans, gay people and others have been honored much more often in the breach than in the fulfillment.
Obviously Canada's success at keeping drug prices down cannot wholly be a function of socialized medicine, because the costs to us capitalists down here south of the border are still much lower in many cases.
Maybe instead of spending tax dollars to demonize Canada it might be a better idea to send a team of experts up there to find out why they can do what we can't and why, if their controls are so much worse, we have created a class of patients willing to take that risk to survive.
Maybe we can trade them legislators, federal and state, for drugs.
Canadians are a resourceful people.
Maybe they can find a use for them.