Here is video of Shepard Smith with Fox News correspondent Dan Springer in Vancouver, B.C. who is ‘reporting’ on the overwhelming waits in Canada for medical care and the terrible suffering we are all going through here.

He says Canadian single-payer “works really well if you don’t get too sick.” In fact, it’s the opposite – it works really well if you do get too sick, because you jump to the front of the queue for care… And yes, there is a queue -if it is less serious, you wait some, if it is more serious or life-threatening, you don’t.

The reason this story is unfair goes far beyond the apples and oranges comparison a U.S. ‘public option’ and the Canadian single-payer system. The real problem with the story is the implication that we Canadians are all waiting around for life-saving surgery, or we are heading to the U.S. to get some real care. They cherry pick a few stories that seem to prove their point, but these are people who end up absorbing huge medical bills if they go to the U.S., and thus is only for those with cash to pay for U.S. medical care. These ’sufferers’ in Canada would be suffering much more if they were uninsured or under-insured and in the U.S.

Looking specifically at one of Fox’s cherry-picked subjects, Foreign Affair to Remember comments on how Fox News just keeps bringing out Lin Gilbert from Vancouver. She is poor and had to wait for treatment for her chronic back pain:

So Fox seems to trot out this poor lady, Lin Gilbert, whenever they need a worst-case scenario to spook the population away from any sort of health care change. OK, if you want to talk horror stories, maybe Fox should interview Monique Zimmerman-Stein, who has been nearly blind for the last two years from Stickler syndrome. She recently decided to forego her own treatment to save funds to treat her two daughters, who also suffer from the condition.

And where in Canada does she live? Florida. Watch how the insurance companies treat her and tell me how proud you are of our system.

News Corpse has this to say about Ms. Gilbert back in July:

Lin Gilbert suffered from debilitating back pain that she says was untreated in an untimely manner in her native Vancouver… eventually she got the surgery she needed and is pain free today. It cost her nothing. She has no debt related to her medical treatment. An American with the same problem would still be suffering or would have racked up an unmanageable debt that would haunt them and their family for the rest of their life.

I can’t speak to what delayed the treatments in Canada for these women, but surveys show that they are the exceptions. Most Canadians are satisfied with their healthcare program, with an overwhelming 82% saying that they prefer their system to a private system like that of their neighbors to the south. Furthermore, a Gallup poll showed that Canadians are far more satisfied with their system than we Americans are with ours.

While there is no denying that there are waits in Canada, would Lin Gilbert have even been able to get care if she lived in the U.S.? Fox doesn’t say.

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