By Doug Draper
After all the ugliness that has been hurled President Barack Obama’s way during his battle for health reform in the United States, possibly one of the last things he needs is some columnist from north of the border comparing him to Tommy Douglas.
Or maybe Obama has so much on his plate at this point, from chronic joblessness in his country to any one of a number of powder-keg issues abroad, that any comparison some columnist from Canada might make between him and a professed socialist from north of the border would hardly make a difference.
Most likely, anyone in his country who is going to carry on with the Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin crowd, calling him everything from a socialist to Adolf Hitler, is never going to give him credit for anything he does to advance health care or any other issue for his fellow Americans anyway.
So in the midst of all this, this commentator decided to dive right in and make the comparison between Obama and the late Tommy Douglas, Canada’s father of universal health care, in a column that ran on the front page of the Viewpoint section of The Buffalo News this April 11 – a column you can access by clicking on http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/04/11/1015744/canadian-health-care-works.html
In that Viewpoint piece, I try to argue that fair, affordable access to health care should be a fundamental right in developed countries like Canada and the United States. I also try to explain why the blow back from the Sarah Palin, -Rush Limbaugh,-Fox News juggernaut south of the border is wrong , from a moral and social justice point of view, for millions of Americans who have no insurance for health care in what is still considered one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest country in the world.
I did not shrink back from pointing out in that Buffalo News piece that we have serious problems around our health care system here in Niagara, Ontario, especially around our hospitals and service cuts to hospital sites in smaller municipalites like Fort Erie and Port Colborne.
But I also tried to make clear that these are problems created, unnecessarily, by incompetence and mismanagement at the provincial level, and more so by a Niagara Health System created a decade ago by the province’s former Conservative government and perpetuated by the current Liberal government to operate most of the hospitals across Niagara, Ontario.
Finally, I stressed to our American neighbours that despite these mismanagement issues, many on the Canadian side of the border are fighting to preserve the health care system Tommy Douglas began crusading for more than half a century ago.
Canadians continue to believe in and fight for fair and accessible access to health care for all of our citizens and Americans should join their president in continuing to fight for it too.
What do you think?
Share your views in the comment boxes below.
And by the way, I don’t mind saying that The Buffalo News is the last fine daily newspaper, trying its best to survive in an age of struggle for newspapers all over the continent, in our greater binational Niagara region.
Please support The Buffalo News by buying or subscribing to it and by encouraging it to expand its coverage to more issues in Niagara, Ontario.
(Click on www.niagaraatlarge for Niagara At Large and more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
Even if it were more expensive to provide everyone with health care coverage, based on medical need, it seems to me morally the right way to go……but strangely enough the U.S. system costs more per capita than any other nation…..and yet 30 million of their people lacked coverage.
Our system in Canada used to be great, and within the past 10 years or so has been struggling. There are a number of problems but one major one is an overbloated, overpaid bureaucracy. Tommy Douglas would turn over in his grave to see how these public servants are exploiting our health care system.
But our system is worth fighting for and don’t pattern ourselves after the self serving USA. Tommy Douglas once said, “There are people among us who say and think….I am doing great, my family is doing great and my friends are doing great, to heck with those who are not.”
If we do it right, the Canadian system is the best, but we must work at it and fight for it and not let it be taken over by greedy, corporate interests.
P.S. I am an American married to a Canadian…and feel justified in speaking my mind on both sides of the border.
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Dear Doug,
I read your Buffalo News article on Obama, Medicare, NHS, et al. Congratulations!
For me, it made a much overdue distinction between American political denigration of our ‘socialized’ system and internal Canadian complaints about flaws and cutbacks in our own services and facilities. You’ve done a clarifying service for people in both countries. Although long (I hope others read it right through, too), it had to be in order to be so very thorough. All in all it is the most informative article I’ve ever read on the subject.
It was also beautifully crafted – you are a fine writer (if I may be so bold as to express such a positive criticism). How you manage to do so much good stuff day in and day out is beyond me. It’s a true gift.
Sincerely,
Bill Hogg
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