Sarah Palin addressing the Conservative Party of Canada

My original statement was not to be taken seriously, as to the canadian health care system, or the formation of Palin's theories about modern health care systems.

I will assume that you are just being ironic too.

the hospitals in Canada were checking where anyone was born (Canada, US or anywhere).

We never had a Social Insurance Number until 1964, before that we were just a name...now we're just a number.

I don't think the provinces issued a medicare care until the mid 70's

This was maybe before Sarah Palin's family traveled there but I learned all of history about this neck of the woods from this...one of my very favorite...weekly TV shows.

Sgt. Preston of the Yukon

and his "wonder dog" King. What else does a body need to know?

For those heading for Alaska along the Alcan highway, Whitehorse is a welcome stop. It has facilities for doing the laundry, stocking up on groceries. It has been a favorite stop for those I know who have made the trip.

Angeline

Seem the universal part was a couple years later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#20th_century

the federal government of Lester B. Pearson, pressured by the New Democratic Party (NDP) who held the balance of power, introduced the Medical Care Act in 1966 that extended the HIDS Act cost-sharing to allow each province to establish a universal health care plan. It also set up the Medicare system. In 1984, the Canada Health Act was passed, which prohibited user fees and extra billing by doctors.

I just pointed out what she said, and that she had advanced a different story, and a different Hospital within the United States, previously.

2. While the final organizational legislation removing individual Insurance Companies from the system was not passed until 1972, the institution of universal Health Care came with the election of a Liberal Government about 1960, but began earlier than that, piecemeal, in various provinces in the later 50's. So the answer is yes, the Yukon, which was not a Province but was a Territory administered by the Federal Government, had Universal Health Care. Please note, that the first 14 years of coverage in Canada was run by Insurance Companies, under government regulation.

But, more to the point: Ms. Palin's family wouldn't have qualified for care under the Canadian system however constituted, they would have had to promise to pay. I don't know whether they would have been charged up front, but those were different times, and Canada has a different way of doing things, and I wasn't here then so I can't speak to the issue from personal knowledge, I can only speak to what I have seen since 1980, and her remarks which have been reported widely here.

My take on it is just that Canadians are sort of patting themselves a bit on the back that a subsequently prominent American had some experience of what Canadians see as one of the defining characteristics of Canadian Nationhood. Every poll taken up here about what issues are dearest to Canadian hearts has Universal Health Care at the top.

I had this discussion with a very nice colleague of my wife's from Virginia after we came up here. Having had 3 or 4 years to get accustomed to Canada and to read its history, which, compared to American History is, with one two pronged incident (the Riel Rebellions, check Wikipedia), very orderly and slightly boring except insofar as it illuminates the haphazard nature of American History, I was better informed than he. The British sent the Army in everywhere, surveyed the country and kept peace through treaty and negotiation with the native tribes. Whites were not allowed in to settle before there was a government administration and a military and police presence in place. I described Canada as a very conservative nation to him, which it is if conservative means cautious, law abiding, orderly, and not open to exploitation in the rough and ready American way (the settling of the West in the US is after all called The Wild West). He was flabbergasted that I called it conservative, because in the US small "c" conservatism has never been part of governance, up here it has been the rule. He saw Canada as this small "l" liberal paradise with a tolerance for a broader spectrum of political ideas than the US, including some socialist ideas, but Canadians aren't Libertarian as the US is. They're liberal which is very different. They're willing to trust government because the population was so small that they had no choice in order to accomplish large continent wide projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway, or Hydro-Electric Power, or the Air line now called Air Canada (they changed the name from Trans Canada Airlines to accommodate the French speaking minority. Imagine that happening in the US, but that didn't happen until about 1970). They couldn't throw the big national projects open to private corporations, because no corporation would take the risk for so small a population without the backing and subsidy of the government. So Canadians have grown up trusting the orderly British system of controlled settlement, and government involvement, and most Canadians except for a segment of Large "C" Conservatives trust the government. And when you examine the history, the government has done its best to earn that trust. But again the issue of Canada's small population comes up. There was never really enough graft to invite exploitation on any but the smallest scale, and beside, the English Speaking part of Canada was not merely English, but Scottish. Hard headed, hard working and painfully moral and upright. They used to say that they rolled up the sidewalks in Tornto at 7PM every night and only put them down for church on Sunday.

In terms of size. At about the time of the Second World war, Canada's entire population was only equal to that of New York City. Imagine that, if you will. A country bigger than the continental US (Alaska wasn't a state) but with a tiny population strung across the continent, most of it within 100 miles of the border. It still boggles my mind to think of it, and I've been here 30 years come July.

Its a nice place, people are considerate, the crime rate is low, and the Government is accountable and can be changed anytime it loses the confidence of the majority of MP's on major legislation (mostly budgetary and "money bills"). The Government ministers what the US calls the Executive Branch are constantly required to defend their actions or lack of action by the Opposition which form a kind of Shadow Cabinet, or Shadow Government, able to question the Government on any issue every week Parliament is in session.

Having been through Watergate, and watched the Iran-Contra hearings or the Ken Starr Inquiry, I appreciate the fact that an organized opposition, in my opinion, keeps the government here more attentive to their constituencies than the less organized opposition in the US. In the US the real opposition which challenges government is the press and television. From what I've been seeing, it doesn't seem to work as well as it once did. The Opposition doesn't have a platform or a set of principles except to use legislative tricks to block action on appointees, and legislation. They don't have to justify their actions, they aren't held accountable.

Sorry, I've been mulling over all of this for years and it just spilled out, partly stimulated by the Obstructican Party after a very clear Electoral Victory, and after two previous equivocal results for Bush and government by decree and Executive Order.

I know that looking at a different government from the US won't convince anybody, you have to live it for a number of years before it sinks in. But an awful lot of Americans have come north over the years, and fewer of them have returned to the US. I met lots of American ex-pats in Britain too, who had learned to be content with the different system of government and social system there. There are even Americans who have moved to France, Germany and Scandinavia and are happy with the change. Now I grant that most of these people are Democrats who have been disenchanted since Nixon's second term, but that doesn't make them wrong, nor does it make my perceptions invalid. I didn't volunteer to come up here, and it has imposed some familial strain which I am sorry about, but I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. I understand more about the US than I did as a Doctoral candidate at Grad School in the States, because I have seen what the form of government we Americans shook off has turned into, and in some ways I find it as good or better than parts of the American system.

Besides, nobody possesses eternal wisdom. That's the danger of strict adherence to 18th Century agrarian republicanism in the 21st Century. Societal organization, distribution of wealth, communication, governance and issues have all changed over the centuries. We ignore that at our peril.

Rob

....some kid's brother going to the hospital? A little far afield? What does something that happened 45-50 years ago in the family of a 5 yr old girl have to do with anything now? I can't see any reasonable connection, only a long stretch back to something that doesn't even apply half a century later.

it was probably the only choice back in those days.

From the father, who was the adult at the time with better memory of the event.
===================

"There was no road out of there at that time," said retired teacher Chuck Heath, reached by phone in Wasilla. "The ferry schedule was very erratic. We had no doctor in Skagway. The plane schedule was very erratic. The winds dictated whether the planes could come in or not."

Heath said his family probably boarded the train for the Whitehorse hospital only twice - once when a daughter had rheumatic fever, and once when his son, also named Chuck, severely burned his leg and an infection set in.

"We much preferred to use our facilities because my insurance didn't cover anything in Whitehorse. And even though they have socialized medicine, I still had to pay the bill, being an American citizen," Heath said.