Getting the swine-flu vaccine in Canada or why the US needs socialized medicine
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Yesterday my daughters and I went to a vaccination center in Montreal and got the swine flu vaccine. We are not Canadian residents, but we’re living in Montreal for most of this year. When I called the very helpful (and bilingual) hot line number at “Pandemic Canada” and explained our unusual situation, the woman was extremely helpful. I asked if there was some way we could pay for the vaccine or do it privately because I didn’t want to abuse the largess of the Canadian government. She answered that there was no way to do the vaccine privately since it is only available free and at the vaccination clinics.
So we traveled to a clinic, presented some documents that showed we are living in Montreal for now, and they got us a shot, along with the hundreds of other people there, in less than ten minutes. It was efficient and free.
Cut to the US, where my children and I live most of the time. The vaccine is still in very short supply, often impossible to get. There are no free clinics in the city where i live, let alone a push to get everyone vaccinated because the vaccine itself is in short supply. According to press reports,
The best protective measure to prevent the spread of the flu is vaccination, but the swine flu vaccine is still in short supply. Shipments are picking up speed, but most communities have nowhere near the amount of vaccine they had expected to have by now, and no clear idea of when they will have enough to offer it to everyone who wants it.
This is sad because the threat of swine flu hasn’t disappeared.
Since the virus – a form of influenza Type A, subtype H1N1 – was first identified in the United States in April, the swine flu has infected at least 30 million Americans and killed about 4,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Swine flu abates, but experts urge preparedness.
What exactly happened in the US that most Americans do not have access to the vaccine? Part of it has got to be greed (it always is when we leave it up to the market). But the other part is what can be called the problem of elite networks. Instead of the federal government setting up centers, running huge propaganda campaigns to encourage people to get the vaccine, and making it widely available and free, they let the local authorities make the arrangements. The result is a system of privilege and elite access that is typical for this country.
Talking to a friend at an private university in the US, I asked if she will get the vaccine. “Oh, we go the vaccine back in October. Because someone at the university has connections to the CDC.” What? Before pregnant women and young children got the shot, privileged university students and employees got it because of connections? Somebody went to Harvard Medical School or whatever elite school with someone else and therefore got access to the vaccine before everyone else?
Cut back to Canada. In Montreal, first young children, people with compromised immune systems and pregnant women. Then elementary school-aged kids. Then 11-19 year-olds. Then everyone else. Including 3 foreigners with no insurance cards. But Canadians understand our situation. They understand that as Americans we would have trouble getting the vaccine at home, since the US is more 3rd World than first when it comes to health care. People with money and connections get access first and foremost and the rest of us are left behind. According to the 2000 World Health Organization rankings, the US was 37th. Obviously such ranking systems are flawed, BUT there we are, below Costa Rica.
The inability of the US health care system or the federal government to deliver free and fair access to the threat of a pandemic flu should have Americans angry and demanding universal coverage. But it doesn’t. Instead average Americans, fed a steady diet of stupidity by Fox News, are responding by believing universal health care to be a “threat” to the “American way.” Instead of caring about themselves or their fellow Americans, they protest, scream, yell, and in Arizona,work to change the state constitutions so no person or employer can be “forced” to have health care.
What the US really needs before the swine flu vaccine, before health care for all, is an education in critical thinking. The first things average Americans who see universal health care as a threat need is to be able to ask questions about who benefits and who doesn’t from the current system.
US health care is the best in the world for the rich among us. But for the rest of us, we can’t even get a vaccine against a pandemic flu. And in Canada, which supposedly has a scary and awful health care system, a huge chunk of the population is getting vaccinated free and fairly.
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As someone is who is predisposed to agree with your sentiments here, I find the way you make your argument to be really distasteful.
-You profess to care for the welfare of American people, yet you display nothing but contempt for us. Your accusations of false consciousness (generated by Fox News, with its TINY viewership!) may win you friends among the Marxian circles in which you travel, but not in a wide public forum. Why not make a rational argument, instead of throwing the term “stupidity” around?
-It’s misleading – at best – to refer to the swine flu vaccine as being “free” in Canada. You’re educated and presumably intelligent; surely you realize nothing is “free.” Rather, the distribution of the swine flu vaccine in Canada is financed through taxpayer dollars. This may be a better way to distribute the vaccine than our more laissez-faire system here in the US. That’s a legitimate argument; why not make it, instead of pedaling fairy tale notions about heavenly Canada?
Gee, I don’t know what circles you travel in perhaps they’re neoliberal capitalist- but clearly they’re kinda nasty in their comment making to fellow contributors. However, you might find it worthwhile to take a look at this recent poll that showed that about half of Americans are misinformed about health care (e.g. 45% believe death panels are real) and that Fox News is the source of this misinformation. See this: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/19/fox-news-viewers-misinformed/
So criticizing Fox News for its stupidity- (and an FCC that allows a product that is not News to call itself News) is not the same as calling Americans stupid. Many Americans are very, very misinformed on many issues- from health care to the idea that “Iraq bombed the world trade center.” That misinformation can be traced directly to Fox News.
In response to another comment. See in context »Sorry Laurie, but the charge of “nastiness” isn’t going to cut it. Your blog post here – along with countless others – are filled with nastiness and invective directed towards your “fellow citizens.” (A point I elaborate on here: http://trueslant.com/ethanepstein/2009/12/04/the-academic-left-thinks-were-stupid/)
A couple of quick points: You characterize Americans as being “stupid” because of their alleged inability to think critically. Moreover, Fox News, with its minuscule viewership of 3 million at most, can hardly be held responsible for the widespread “misinformation” regarding health care reform.
And speaking of misinformation, you did not respond to my more substantive charge: you were misleading and demagogic when you referred to Canadian health care as “free.” Almost ‘Foxian,’ you could say.
In response to another comment. See in context »I suggest you read the study I sent you showing how Fox News misinforms and the effect it has on American understandings of health care. Then perhaps we can have a dialog- although you don’t seem interested in that.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think Nathan is just upset that he only has 9 followers on this site.
In response to another comment. See in context »As someone is who is predisposed to agree with your sentiments here, I find the way you make your argument to be really fucking awesome.
Having seen first hand, time and again, the terror people can go through with life threatening illnesses, no health insurance and a government that doesn’t seem to really give a shit whether they live or die, i wholeheartedly appreciate your no-nonsense tone of indignation.
If the only writers out there i had to read were milquetoast numb nuts (see above) that are just thrilled to endlessly discuss issues in the most inert, politically correct manner possible, i would have long ago jumped in front of a Greyhound.
Can we all have the exact same socialized medicine the government employees around these parts have…..totally and completely free, never paying a dime out of,their own pockets
Excellent post Laurie- everything in this country is now based on wealth or access, since our country is now being financed by powerful lobby groups who own our Congress.
I think you’re right on target, Ms Essig. And my regard for our neighbors, the Canadians, just continues to grow and grow.
First, American health care is like a Hummer is like a Big Mac. Though some 40 million Americans get too little medical care, most Americans get way too much of it, usually depending on medical care rather than depending on health maintenance–eating right, keeping thin, exercising, avoiding toxins/carcinogens like tobacco, reducing stress.
Much of US medicine is useless or of dubious value, as the recent studies of some cancer screenings showed.
We spend 2.5 times here what they spend in the UK, per capita, on medical care. With the public option Obama is trying to open the door to cost containment. That’s the real battle, because with cost containment, medical care will be made affordable to the huge underclass.
BTW, the US has the same number of people living in poverty as Mexico, about 40 million. We have succeeded where apartheid South Africa failed, at creating our own bantustans. We will not succeed at abolishing them by throwing money at the problem.
Many people who do not have privileged access to medical care still fight to uphold the system that denies them. They may not have the privilege of the wealthy, but they have slightly more privilege than their neighbors, and they jealously maintain their edge.
The liberal elite doesn’t tend to see this, but the forces of labor know it all too well. The Democrats risk fracturing their coalition if they don’t pay better attention to the concerns of the labor movement. In the health care area, wage workers get their health care through negotiated agreements, and it’s easy for insurance companies to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about how those agreements will hold up under “socialized medicine”.
Your ignorance is astounding. If you think there is a free market in anything in the US, much less health care-including vaccines-you’re wrong.
There are only four companies in the US allowed to produce vaccines. And the FDA makes it incredibly difficult for any new company to enter the market, and incredibly difficult. And because of well-intentioned government distortions of the market, only a few govts agencies purchase vaccines.
Of course since you have no interest of coming at the issue objectively-even for yourself, not merely as a source of information for other people-you don’t know this, don’t know there is no free market, that we live under a govt supported economy of state capitalism/corporatism/economic fascism.
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Just wished to say, Ms. Essig, how I enjoy reading your intelligent views.
Ms. Essig, you have hit the topic right on the head. As someone who has been without health coverage for many years (and whose entire family carries at least one psychiatric diagnosis), we dread the common cold for fear that it will turn into a more serious case of pneumonia.
We are fortunate enough that our children will have the opportunity to have the H1N1 vaccine through their school district, however Mom and Dad are out of luck.
@andygeier–Your comment rocks! Mr. Epstein is indeed a cottonheaded ninnymuggins.
Yeah. Keep it coming, Laurie. Yours is a very fine mind. I think you’re the only progressive capable of understanding our high level of immigration, legal and illegal, for what it is: neo-liberal capitalism at its most pernicious. People to clean our toilets while we extoll the American Dream. It isn’t stupidity, it isn’t an inability to think critically, it’s corruption, and most progressives have a bad case of it. I appreciate your attempt to “vaccinate” the population against corruption. Why think when you can have a Big Mac instead?