There are some good things

Among the surprisingly many positive aspects of keeping this side of the sod is remembering the way things were before....(fill in the blank). This isn't going to be the usual drooling tirade about how it was in my day and the food tasted better, the rivers were cleaner and a dollar was worth a dollar (unless you were in the United States where the Canadian dollar has always been looked upon with the same suspicion as a wooden nickel and a deed to land in Florida).

No, this is going to be a tirade about why we really need to keep some of the things that have happened along since I was a little nipper chasing a rusty steel hoop down the street and dragging home a bucket of lard for dinner...I'm old enough - just barely, mind you, to remember when there was no medicare. You know, socialized medicine.

A lot of people here don't even think about walking into a clinic, slapping down the BC health card or whatever each province uses to monitor its citizens health-care consumption, and walking out again ten minutes later (or twenty or thirty) with a reassuring diagnosis and a prescription for a generic placebo guaranteed to cure whatever ails you and add to the chemical stew pouring out into the oceans after a brief filtration through your kidneys.

When I was a child, doctors made house calls but they left this thing called a bill when they left. If you went to visit the doctor in his office, you left with the bill or paid up front, depending on your relationship with said physician. My parents were on a first name basis with our family doctor - and once you have children, you will be equally familiar with your medical care giver, I can promise that. Not only did my parents know him, they were on a first name basis with his pets, two de-scented skunks called 'Stinky' and 'Phewy'.

But I digress.

How does this affect my life? Well, I can remember a few occasions, when due to the length of time till my father's paycheque was due to hit the bank and whether it was summer or winter determining the need to take my sister or myself to Stinky's dad. My dad was a teacher. This was in the days when teachers were paid at the end of June and not expected to come around, cap in hand, knuckling their foreheads and respectfully seeking the next generous gratuity for having beaten good citizenship, math and some grammar into the the towns young'uns until the end of September. In other words three months would go by without any income whatsoever.

So, if one has to pay the doctor and is too proud to ask for credit when standing in the waiting room in front of all the other parents and respectable folk, then it had damn well better be an emergency.

That is why I spent two days with a fractured wrist before my mother decided I wasn't deliberately making my arm look swollen from the elbow down to get out of my chores. Which, admittedly, I didn't have anyway. Finally she took me in after seeing if the doctor was going to be in the hospital anyway and would he mind taking a quick look. I had a cool cast for 6 weeks right in the middle of summer and swimming season - boy was I happy, sitting in the wading pool holding my left arm out of the water while my sister, mom and dad frolicked in the real persons pool at where ever it was we had gone that summer - Radium, I think.

Actually, mom would have been sitting on a towel beside the pool because she very rarely went into a pool or lake. The bathing suit was not the problem - she cut a fine figure in a bathing suit and dark glasses - it was that she was terrified of drowning. Which I didn't learn until much later.

Anyway, over the years we have taken for granted the ability of walking into a doctor's office or the emergency ward or a clinic and receiving treatment. Some of us over use the system and some of us under use it. But the fact remains it is there for us when we need it.

I hear a lot of young adults complaining about having to contribute so much of their pay to something they never use - except for skiing accidents and the like. They look at old farts like me who has specialists booked 3 months in advance for the next ten years and for the past ten as well. I'm a huge drain on the system. As we age we drain more and more. Yup, no argument here.

So, next time you want to sound off about it, ask yourself if you plan on living to the age of 40? Of course you're going to keep yourself healthy and fit and go to the gym ten times a week plus jogging in between. You won't need a doctor - except for the stress injuries to your knees and ankles. And by the time you're 4o when you're rotator cuff blows up while playing a little friendly soft ball. But that's different. You'll save your money up to pay for these things.

But then you get married and decide to have kids. They won't change your life at all. I'm sure you will avoid all the pitfalls your parents landed in and have a mid-wife there to hold you in a pool of warm water while your infant, dolphin like, swims out of your body and into the arms of a loving family. Cue the soft, melodic 'rainforest' mood music.

Maybe you will. And you'll leap from the pool, do a few sit-ups to get the whole abdomen back into shape and return to work in a few days. A unicorn will bring your child to work so you may suckle it at your desk while co-workers look on, their barren eyes welling with envy.

Or maybe not.

Maybe your blood pressure will skyrocket in the second trimester and your blood sugars will jump around like the Pussy Cat Dolls on ecstasy and you'll need close monitoring for gestational diabetes. Yes, even if you are eating all the right foods and taking all the supplements and exercising faithfully.

Maybe your baby will come a few weeks early and you'll be rushed to hospital - perish the thought, what the hell do they know there about health? And you'll find your perfect child on one side of an incubator and you plastered to the outside of it looking in.

That's about $20,000.00 right there, not counting the extended care time for you to recover from the premature birth and finally be sent home. And the cost of the Neo-natal doctor and special Neo-natal ICU nurses.

You don't have to wait till you're an old fart like me to need the medical system and it's harder to afford if you've just started a job and still treading water at the bottom rung of the salary ladder.


So, where was I? Oh yes. I do remember what it was like before socialized medicine began in this country and I can see what it is like in countries where they don't have it or have allowed it to be monkeyed with until it doesn't resemble anything universal or caring or healthy. And it scares me to hear people who are either in the pay of big american medical insurance companies or have more money than brains talk about how awful it is here and how we'd be much better off with private insurance.

Just say no. They are idiots. They are acting out of financial self interest. They don't know because they either don't remember or don't care. Take your pick but take a moment to look into the issue and light a candle at the shrine of Tommy Douglas .