Welcome once again to a $27-group / Political Revolution open thread, a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, and enjoy some inspiring quotes, along with some good music and (most importantly) a picture or two of foresterbob’s cat Noble Fur.
I’ve been absent the past few weeks due to lack of working internet, but the problem is now fixed. (I’m posting on Sunday this weekend but next week $27 Quotes should be back to Saturday.)
Let’s start with some quotes from Danielle Martin, a Canadian doctor who testified eloquently in US senate hearings on health care back in 2014. Here’s an exchange she had with Republican senator Richard Burr:
Richard Burr: On average, how many Canadian patients on a waiting list die each year? Do you know?
Danielle Martin: I don't sir, but I know that there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don't have insurance at all.
If you’ve got 7 minutes, here’s a video featuring her which includes that quote:
x YouTube VideoFor those who prefer written quotes to video quotes, here’s a transcript of another really good portion of the video (from 4:15 to 5:20):
SANDERS: Doctor, is your prime minister [in Canada] a socialist? MARTIN: No, sir, our prime minister is quite conservative. SANDERS: Conservative? So obviously as a conservative, he wants to implement the American health care system that the Canadians are very aware of. I gather that was probably the first thing he did when he took power; is that right? MARTIN: [Laughter] Not exactly. SANDERS: Why not? MARTIN: Support for single-payer medicare in Canada goes across all political stripes. Quite famously, we had the leader of the most right-wing party in the Canadian federal debate on television hold up a sign in the middle of the debate on which he’d written in marker “no two-tier” as a means of trying to reassure the Canadian public that if elected he would not dismantle the system. SANDERS: In other words, you have a nation bordering on the United States — two nations that are probably as close together in so many respects as any two nations in the world — a conservative prime minister, and yet there is no effort to move to an American health care system. I would say to my colleagues [that] there’s not a better example of maybe how people feel about two systems. They know the American system; they have a conservative prime minister. They can move in our direction, but for whatever reason — and, I think, sensible reasons — they understand that a system that guarantees health care to all of their people in a cost-effective way is the way that they want to stay.