Nov. 8, 2014 note: Just to add a point here about health care in retrospect. It’s important to recognize that if we’re in a system in which the government has taken control of health care already, it’s what we have. Then most people depend on it, and the whole idea of “cutting” resources back that people depend on and providing less services to people when that’s all they have is just the same as stealing a collectively owned property or kicking some helpless person whose hands you’ve already tied. So even in these early days when I was running as a libertarian, I may have been seen as a tool that served the interests of the major parties who were in the non-business of cutting back services, but in my mind what I was doing was to call for a totally different system based on letting people loose, and freedom and not having taxes taken from us, etc. My instincts and principles had no interest in “cutting” and “saving”–just in freeing things up and having MORE of everything. On the other hand, I didn’t realize early on how dark it got with what the major parties were doing, and like most people I guess, I mostly attributed wrong-headed good intentions to other parties just like left-wingers attributed only good intentions to those who designed socialized health care. It’s a control system. It’s a rationing system. It’s a surveillance system. Regardless of whatever good people there are involved in the system, they’re part of a command and control system that just follows orders, and the good intentions and humane values are being subverted among Western nations as a different value system takes over from on high.

Anyway the following is just the standard thing in Ontario where you wait. Of course it gets much worse than this, such as waiting months and months for specialist to see you. Looking back on this, actually it wasn’t so bad, just day to day stuff. But it would be better if they had a way of actually healing glaucoma enough so that at least we didn’t have to take the toxic medication, and that we had our own affordable way to measure our eye pressure. A truly free society would leave this in the dust. Propaganda prevents people from recognizing what kind of monopolistic totalitarian attitudes dominate the world they live in. Health, pharma (including vaccines), food, and the extent of the illnesses we face now — these are very serious subjects that hit most families very hard. The power of propaganda prevents us from recognizing what’s being done to us.

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I was diagnosed this week with glaucoma on Tuesday and I had laser eye surgery on Friday.  I’m very appreciative to my optometrist who booked my appointment to check for some concerns a while ago (I was shocked to be diagnosed though) and I appreciated the work of the opthamologist who diagnosed me and did the surgery to lower the pressure.  I really appreciate the advice I got from friends. But I’ve got to tell you that these are huge potential delays and wait-times we are talking about for referrals to eye surgeons in the Ontario health care system, and I experienced this first-hand this week.   I notice that new patients have misconceptions about the system, and think it’s like the free market, and expect to be served promptly when they’re scheduled, but this is not possible.  And if you were booked a month in advance, you should get ready to wait a couple of hours for your session.  The doctors’ office was full of redirected emergency room patients when I was waiting on Tuesday. Don’t be quick to lose your temper and walk out – it’s a mistake! The problems are due to the communist health care system which the doctors do their best to adapt to.  Of course the government picks away at it in its attempts to salvage it, and some important tests cost extra and are not covered by OHIP.   My next test is two months from now.

September 30th, 2007