Letter: I'll take Canada's health care system over America's any day

Mona Charen apparently does not believe that health care is a human right.

I hope last week’s Mona Charen column makes the Sun-Times mailbox overflow!

She asks, “So, you want Canadian health care?”

Well, duh. Yes, we do. It’s better than what we have right now.

Charen, who is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center — a think tank that professes to be dedicated to the Judeo-Christian moral tradition — apparently does not believe that health care is a human right.

She is part of the “I’ve got mine, sucks to be you” crowd that would like to maintain the status quo: mega profits for health care executives and big pharma.

Charen neglected to mention that her think tank is funded by foundations created by big corporations, including big pharma, oil, Forbes and the Koch brothers, according to sourcewatch.org.

Her column also talked about wait times in Canada. What is Charen’s source? None other than the Fraser Institute, which also is funded by the Koch brothers and big oil.

Well, I would like to just give a snapshot of my own experience with wait lines.

I have employer-based health care. I pay for everything out of pocket like most folks because I have a $6,000 annual deductible, so I try not to go to the doctor.

A couple of summers ago I had an infected mosquito bite that turned serious and didn’t respond to over the counter medication. I called for a doctor’s appointment and was told that since I hadn’t been to the doctor in over two years, I would have to start over.

Their first new patient appointment was three weeks away. They said I could go to the emergency room if I felt I needed help. So I went to a Walgreens clinic.

That’s our health care system.

I’ll take Canada’s any day!

Rita Maniotis, Berwyn

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