The story of Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’ trip to Florida for heart surgery hasn’t exactly elevated the argument about health care. To try to shift to a more useful debate, I suppose it would seem even-handed of me to insert here a diplomatic comment about how both advocates and opponents of universal insurance went overboard. But I think the mistakes mostly came from the right, in the form of hasty claims that Williams’ decision somehow proved the Canadian system is fatally flawed.

As more facts emerged, that gleeful assertion just didn’t hold up. All evidence suggests that excellent heart surgery of  exactly the sort Williams needed was readily available in Canada. The other factors that might have legitimately influenced his choice—the amenities of a U.S. hospital where the rich can pay out-of-pocket, the skills of a particular surgeon recommended to Williams by his own doctor, the proximity of a Miami hospital to the premier’s Florida condo—don’t matter much.

Continue…

[UPDATED BELOW WITH SURGEONS' COMMENTS]

I haven’t heard anybody say that Danny Williams shouldn’t have been allowed to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. As the Newfoundland premier has declared in interviews published yesterday and today, it’s his heart, his health.

But accepting the personal nature of the choice hardly ends the conversation. Williams’ decision to check into Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami to be operated on by a veteran surgeon has been seized upon by critics of public health insurance as proof of the Canadian system’s inherent weakness.

Continue…

Kevin Page has released his latest report. The Globe got an early look and summarizes as so.

In a report released today, Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page warns it’s not good enough for Ottawa to simply balance the books – because of the increasing squeeze Canada’s greying ranks will place on coffers.

He predicts that even if Ottawa slays the deficit, it will still have to confront an expanding “fiscal gap” in revenue over the decades ahead that rises to $20-billion to $40-billion annually within seven decades. This will arise as Canada’s work force shrinks in proportion to its growing pool of retirees, a trend that should both slow the growth of government tax revenue and increase demands for health-care spending and old-age benefits.

The NDP leader talks—begins at about the four minute mark—to George about cancer, health care and the New Democrat cause. Deep insight into the eternal optimism of the New Democrat mind contained therein.

Ever since Danny Williams was revealed to have been seeking treatment for a heart ailment across the border, the media have been observing a strange and uncomfortable silence about the matter.

On one hand, this reticence is commendable. Williams’s preference in health care is nobody’s business, and should remain, as far as possible, a private matter between him and his God. Though some claim this is a lifestyle choice, it’s far more likely that it is a result of something beyond his control. As such, it is not a fit matter for public commentary.

But once the story has, by one means or another, entered the public domain, that puts a different colour on it. At that point, the media are not just declining to report on something: they are actively colluding in a fiction. The issue is no longer Williams’s medical inclination. It’s the media’s refusal to acknowledge reality.

It’s not as if this were twenty or thirty years ago, when the mere knowledge that someone had a preference for American health care might have been enough to end his political career, or to bring social censure and humiliation upon him. In this more enlightened age, most people are more likely to react with a yawn. It is no longer unusual to see people who openly “go south,” from captains of industry to sports stars. Many Canadians have discovered they know someone like that — perhaps even a member of their own family. All that we are accomplishing by suppressing discussion of Williams’s case is to suggest that there is something embarrassing or shameful about it. Far from erasing a stigma, we are reinforcing it.

I’m not suggesting we should go around unmasking politicians who use American health care, but who prefer not to discuss it. But this taboo on reporting things that are already public knowledge is contrary to our natural urges as a profession, and as such strikes me as unhealthy.

SIGH: For readers who are puzzled by the first paragraph, Rob Silver’s comment below is well worth reading.

Glen Pearson leaves for Africa with much on his mind.

Like many reading this blog, I’ve done a lot of thinking over the present prorogation of Parliament and I presume I’m in the vanguard of those who are deeply troubled by the development. Yet in so many ways, Canada has been prorogued for years. Suspending or cancelling our international commitment to Africa is bad enough, but where also is our commitment to battling climate change, or how could we spend so abundantly with no plan in place for how we pay it off? While our Aboriginal communities still suffer from our prorogation of the human spirit, this country yet refuses to sign the UN’s Declaration of Aboriginal Rights. We went AWOL on medical isotopes and have done absolutely nothing to deal with the emerging healthcare crisis already at our doorstep. Child poverty is roughly what it was 20 years ago and we still haven’t figured out what our development plans look like as we leave Afghanistan.

Heck, this country has been in prorogation for a long time, enough that it might be time to worry that it’s becoming part of our collective DNA. In our inability and lack of maturity surrounding minority government, we take the kind of incremental steps that lead to … nothing. Parliamentarians sit fewer days in the House than ever before and these significant issues lie in wait for someone to use power for anything other than the desire to hold on to it.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett testifies before the U.S. Senate’s special committee on aging, has minor squabble with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker.

The day’s hearings can be watched in their entirety here.