Right-Wing Health Care Group Misled Canadian Interviewees Who Appeared In Anti-Reform Ads
Right-Wing Health Care Group Misled Canadian Interviewees Who Appeared In Anti-Reform Ads
Earlier this year, Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), an anti-health care reform group led by the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Rick Scott, began running a commercial attacking the Canadian health care system. The TV ad runs through “tragic stories” of Canadian citizens who it portrays as being against government-run health plans such as Canada’s Medicare system. Watch it:
Now, CTV British Columbia is reporting that CPR misled several of the interviewees who appeared in their ads. One of them, Charlie Wadge, feels that the ad unfairly portrayed Canada’s system as “barbaric“:
A B.C. man featured in a series of American conservative health care ads says the videos portray the Canadian medicare system as “barbaric” — and that goes too far. [...]
“They just made it sound way worse than it was,” he said. “They made it sound barbaric — like we don’t have a health care system at all.” [...]
The patients were recruited by Rick Baker, a B.C.-based consultant for Timely Medical Services, which matches disillusioned Canadian patients with American hospitals, and Dr. Brian Day, who runs a private hospital at Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver. [...]
[Wadge] feels terrible that his words are being used to slow health care reform in the United States. He said if given the choice again, he would decline to appear in any ad.
“I think everyone should have health care,” he said.
This isn’t the first time CPR has misled its interview subjects. Last month, the Daily Mail reported that CPR tricked British women into appearing in its ad series slamming the British single-payer health care system known as the National Health Service.
While CPR’s misleading ads portray the Canadian single-payer health care system as unpopular and unable to provide care for the Canadian public, the reality is completely different. A bi-national poll conducted last year found that 91 percent of Canadians say they have a better health care system than the United States (a plurality of Americans agree). Indeed, the Commonwealth Fund ranks Canada ahead of the United States in terms of “dimensions of access, patient safety, efficiency, and equity.” And as Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) says, “there’s more likelihood of a person in Canada being struck by lightning than there is a likelihood of a Canadian going to the United States for their health care.”
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Conservatives for Patients’ Rights… possibly the most ironic group name ever?
NOTHING that has come from these clowns is trustworthy.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:39 pmI don’t doubt that some people are unhappy with the Canadian system because I know a couple who thinks the Mayo Clinic is a band of witch doctors It is so repiggie to pull a stunt like this. I know many Canadians in the Bahams who go home to Canada for their treatment and say it is excellent.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:46 pmThis is just fraud, and fascist Republicans don’t think fraud is a crime. The Republican crime syndicate has so disrupted the rule of law in America, we can no longer be considered a nation of laws.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:46 pmAcorn says:
Those rascally conservatives, they tried the same thing with Acorn.
So you admit you guys have been misleading everyone about ACORN as well?
That’s big of you. Surprising!
Thanks!
September 11th, 2009 at 2:48 pmThe reason that government programs appear so incompetent is because their processes and workings are all publicly known information. Any organization has problems, but with a public organization, their problems are everybody’s business. With a private company, all you know about how they work is what they want you to know – i.e. their branding.
However, anybody who has worked for a company of any size knows that they’ve got procedural problems going on all the time, all of which are perfectly comparable to the problems of public organizations.
For example, everybody knows about everything that the USPS does wrong or inefficiently. But unless you work for UPS, you don’t know what they’re doing wrong too. If you do work for them, you find out that they’re both doing about as bad or good of a job overall.
Dealing with difficulties and improving processes is the daily business of any economic endeavor. They exist everywhere. Just because some of them get to hide it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:48 pm.
Q U E S T I O N:
Why do producers feel the need to go across boarders to interview people about under-quality health care and their dissatisfaction, when there are a plethora of them right here in THIS Country?
Is the issue Canada’s health care woes?
Or is the issue American health care?
Then why won’t these producers interview Americans?
.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:48 pmYa, it’s not enough to bend the truth, twist people’s words and spin facts here at home, the GNOP is taking their propaganda machine and going global.
Sorry, World, we don’t want them here, either.
PEACE
September 11th, 2009 at 2:49 pmGotta love those pr folks,
leaving no dog unwagged, for whoever can pay their bill, no matter how heinous the result.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:51 pmOT – sorry
September 11th, 2009 at 2:53 pmFormer Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman confirmed to CNN Friday that he has been diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a generally temporary condition that affects the nerves of the muscles on one side of a person’s face.
Is he covered by the government provided insurance care? Or will he have to find his own, now that he is unemplopyed?
Will this be a pre-existing condition, preventing him from obtaining coverage?
Being a BC resident born and raised (also have lived and worked in Washington state for several years) I was really pi$$ed when I saw those commercials! Glad the people in there that mischaracterized Canadian healthcare went public denouncing the way their statements were used.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:58 pmYes, taking a skewed view of the Canadian health care system is misleading. Yes, talking about the Canadian system is pretty much irrelevant because none of the bills with any chance of success this year would implement a comparable plan.
BUT
What exactly did this genius think they were going to do with his complaints other than make his country’s system look barbaric? I hate it when my countrymen try to affect the internal affairs of other nations and don’t appreciate it when others do the same. I love our Canadian brethren but seriously dude, if you like your health care system perhaps next time an American producer asks you to trash it on camera you could just shut the f@*# up.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:01 pmI am reminded of Al Franken’s book.
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
These miscreants should be worth at least a chapter in the next edition.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pmAhhh, the REAL LIARS exposed!
The only thing Conservatives are concerned about Patients’ rights is money.
The same thing the insurers are concerned with.
The acronym is cute, CPR, but that should apply to the health of the Republic Party because they’re in dire need of resuscitation!
Beware, though, giving mouth to mouth to a Republic is very much like kissing a pig, never mind the lipstick.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pmHmmm…this story uses a lot of words like “misled” and “tricked” when describing how CPR recruits people to appear in their ads. Something is terribly wrong when they can’t be straightforward.
And why is CPR wanting to show us health care systems in Canada and the UK? Not that I wouldn’t be delighted with either one of them, but neither model is anywhere close to what’s on the table in Congress right now.
Japan and Switzerland come closer. Does CPR have any plans for misleading or tricking the Japanese or the Swiss into appearing in ads for them? Or can’t they find anything bad to say about these countries?
September 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pmPerhaps that group should be referred from now on as “Conservatives For Patients’ Last Rites,” given the lack of adequate medical care that the average citizen will be able to afford.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:08 pmExactly right, missmolly.
If the health care system in Canada really WAS the disaster they want us to believe, you’d think that they could get compelling testimony to that effect without having to worry about the folks they interviewed coming back later and saying their views were misrepresented.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:11 pmFooling people…or Astroturf, just like here!!
September 11th, 2009 at 3:12 pmone again, the one question on cancervative will answer for me:
if nationalized healthcare is such a bad thing them why hasn’t a single nation which has it voted to get rid of it?
September 11th, 2009 at 3:19 pmFalse advertising is illegal.
However a quick search on the matter indicates to me that false and fraudulent adverting is only illegal in the commercial sector, being limited to goods and services.
It seems there is no requirement for “interest groups” that may represent commercial entities directly or indirectly to be truthful in their advertising, and thus there are no penalties for fraud either.
How very convenient.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pmI already knew CPR was misleading the volunteers.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:22 pmThe Republican’ts, if they TRULY wanted Americans to know about Canadian health care, should publicize this link:
http://prorev.com/2009/06/canadian-health-care-myths.html
September 11th, 2009 at 3:27 pmHow can Rick Scott have such ba11s?
September 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pmAnd why is he not in prison?
He makes a fortune by way of medicare fraud,
then appears in this corporate propaganda ad
produced by the “swiftboat” p.r. firm.
“the British single-payer health care system known as the National Health Service.”
OBNitpick:
Actually, the NHS is a government-run health delivery system, along the lines of our VA. In this case, not only does the government provide coverage, they also manage the hospitals, and pay all the staff. They’re highly efficient, and can have very good outcomes, according to most reliable studies.
A single-payer system is what they have in Canada, or what we have for those 65+ and disabled, in both cases called Medicare. Under this system, taxes fund subsidized coverage through one governmental “super insurer” which has enough clout to demand reductions in cost from providers. Again, studies show that these systems are much more efficient at providing a high standard of primary care as measured in increased longevity and surveys of patient satisfaction.
More importantly (and unfortunately, IMO), neither of these is remotely like what we have on the table right now, which is a major compromise from a single-payer ideal. It’s a package geared to expand coverage, but not to alarm those who are satisfied with what they have. Oh, and maybe save some money at the margins.
We can only win this debate by educating people, so it’s very important that we be very clear about these distinctions each and every time we discuss this, because the other side is doing their darndest to scare people that the scary black man and his, special-needs-baby-eating, grandma-killing, deviant liberal minions are coming to rape their daughters, take their health insurance away, and give illegal immigrants their SUVs.
In the face of that, we need to appear as calm, informed and reasonable as possible, because, believe me, the other side has waaaay less shame, and they’re just plain better at being hysterical, nihilistic, sociopathic, liars.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:32 pmCorporate
September 11th, 2009 at 3:32 pmPricks
Regurgitating
Here’s my experience while visiting Canada. I slipped and hurt my ankle and the Hotel sent me to a clinic. They gave me a complete work up and then said thanks for visiting. I asked about the cost they said there was none and I was a guest. I still tried to leave a tip and the Doctor said no just enjoy the rest of your trip. Now I never knew an small accident would end up allowing me to experience free Health Care. So when I read stories about what the Health Care in Canada is like I know it personally. It’s sad we have so many in the US that lie to Americans in order for Insurance companies and Doctors to continue to steal from Americans.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:33 pmBozo The Neoclown says: one again, the one question on cancervative will answer for me:
if nationalized healthcare is such a bad thing them why hasn’t a single nation which has it voted to get rid of it?
Easy to answer. Obama was born in Kenya. Kenya was part of the British Empire. The British appeased Hitler. Hitler bombed Manchester. Manchester United wear red uniforms. Red is the color of socialism. Socialism is Communism. Communism is Fascism. Fascism is part of the New World Order. The NWO sound like an Eighties band. Band Aid was in 1984 to benefit Africa. Africa is the country where Barack Obama was born in 1961. 1961 reads the same if you look at it upside and backwards. Are you with me so far? Good!
Anyway……
September 11th, 2009 at 3:41 pm“Corporate
Pricks
Regurgitating”
or,
Conservatives
Profiteering
Rapaciously
This is fun!
September 11th, 2009 at 3:43 pmSo why is anyone surprised about this? Who’s been spouting lies all along about not just health care, but anything to do with the new administration? Bozo The Neoclown has their patter down pat. They’ll twist, bend and re-truth everything and anything in order to “put that uppity darkie back in his place!” (That’s in South Carolina Wilson-speak!)
September 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm5thestate@#27—Great post! You may be approached by Fox news to do commentary.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pmThe Truth …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXXBCFnhsUc&feature=player_embedded
If you can handle the truth.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:54 pmConservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), an anti-health care reform group led by the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Rick Scott, began running a commercial attacking the Canadian health care system.
Wow. A nominal “patients’ rights” group run by a health care executive (in fact, one of the worst of the worst). Something about foxes and chickencoops (and perhaps sheep) comes to mind. We are living in BizarroWorld.
Cheers,
September 11th, 2009 at 3:59 pm5th @ 27, brilliant!
It’s “The Obama Code” and you’ve broken it! And thanks for including the shout out to Palin’s ignorance by referring to Africa as a country. But you had me convinced when you astutely point out that Obama’s birth year reads the same upside down. Wow, the Scully and Mulder were right… the truth is out there.
PEACE
September 11th, 2009 at 4:00 pmSaHu is correct.
Britain does not have single-payer health care, but rather they have nationalized their health care industry.
As radically left as I am compared to most Americans, I don’t support this program, personally, as I think that health care providers should be private citizens, not government employees, but if we could offer collegiate and medical education like we offer public high schools (tax-payer funded with very low or nonexistent tuition) so there were no enormous education costs, I would be more supportive of an England-style system.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pmJackie says: I slipped and hurt my ankle and the Hotel sent me to a clinic.
My brother slipped on snow and ice two blocks from his apartment and thought he’d seriously sprained his ankle. He limped back to the building adn up three flights of stairs, and did what he could to reduce the swelling and ease the pain.
I was working in Chicago and happened to call him up that night. I flew down immediately (a $1,200 ticket). His foot was now the size of an American football.
He had basic health insurance. I had to call a taxi to get him to the designated clinic to be looked at.
To get an obviously need X-ray meant going to another clinic, 6 blocks away. They didn;t offer us any crutches for him and when I asked, they said they didn’t provide any.
I had to practically carry him the six blocks. It took us half an hour. The X-ray showed he’d broken a couple of bones in his foot and ankle.
Then we had to go back to the original clinic and show them the X-rays so they could prescribe treatment. drugs etc.
Back to Clinic #1, got a painkiller prescription and a prescription for a one of those high-tech boot-casts.
But we had to to go to a pharmacy supply store a block away to get them. Got the RX sorted out but they didn’t have any crutches. Had to get another taxi to go to a larger supply store a mile away to buy crutches.
Five hours later, we get back to the apartment.Everything was below my brother’s deductible. Luckily I had the money for all the expenses because my brother didn’t. He was out of work for 4 weeks, so he lost a month of wages.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:09 pmNo slack for the right wingers, but why are these Canadians agreeing to be interviewed in the first place?
September 11th, 2009 at 4:29 pmNo slack for the right wingers, but why are these Canadians agreeing to be interviewed in the first place?
Well, you can be sure that those interviews are heavily edited. They might have got long answers about how well the health care system is over there and then slipped in a question, “Well, no system is perfect. Do you have any negative experiences at all?” Then they take only the answer to that question, and carefully edit that, taking only the scary parts.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pmsmidget says: SaHu is correct. Britain does not have single-payer health care, but rather they have nationalized their health care industry.
Umm, half-right?.
The British healthcare industryisn’t ‘nationalized’, it is in fact private.
The NHS is the public system, paid for by a mandatory deduction from wages. It isn’t an industry, it is a government service.
The British health care industry provides an alternative to the NHS system for those who can afford to pay the premium. The private sector also handles elective surgery, which the NHS tends not to do.
I was born at home in the UK, a midwife attending and a doctor’s visit a about three hours later. No bill.
One of my brothers at age 13 had open heart surgery under the NHS. No bill, no additional expenses.
I fractured my skull at age 12, two days in a coma and a week in hospital. No bill.
My father died at home, a nurse attending. No bill.
My mother had laser eye surgery under the NHS so she wouldn;t go blind. No bill.
My mother spent three days in an ICU, then five weeks in a private room on oxygen, IV and catheter, at an NHS hospital. She was dying and we all knew it. After we had some laughs and went over all the particulars regarding the estate and her funeral, she told she was going to ask the doctors to “pull the plug”. She wasn’t in major pain, she’d had a great life and now she’d done enough and had had enough of being incapacitated. She was fully compis mentis.
One last gin and tonic—the only thing at that point she could taste (and the medical staff had no problem with it) and we said goodnight (it was still afternoon actually).
The nurses said they’d make sure she was “comfortable”.
The next morning we were informed that she’d died.
No legal interventions, no forms to fill out, no bill.
September 11th, 2009 at 4:46 pmSahu @#24
says:
because the other side is doing their darndest to scare people that the scary black man and his, special-needs-baby-eating, grandma-killing, deviant liberal minions are coming to rape their daughters, take their health insurance away, and give illegal immigrants their SUVs.
Best quote of the week to Sahu!!!
September 11th, 2009 at 4:54 pmRUCerious….
I have to ‘ding’ Sahu for forgetting to mention the taking away of guns and the hoax of global warming.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:25 pmUnderstandable omissions, of course–it’s hard to keep track of every lunatic claim.
#30 cec says: 5thestate@#27—Great post! You may be approached by Fox news to do commentary.
(also HI spencersmom!)
Actually my little bit of mimicry started out quite well, but I just couldn’t hold it together. WIngnuts make it look so easy!
I was proud of the 1961 bit though!
September 11th, 2009 at 5:31 pmI like what David Michael Green wrote today:
” We have, in this country, a rent-seeking corporate vampire oligarchy that masquerades as a national healthcare system. It isn’t fundamentally there to provide improved heath. It’s fundamental purpose, rather, is to enrich a tiny segment of the population that happens to be already fantastically wealthy.”
September 11th, 2009 at 8:55 pmSesli Sohbet,
September 11th, 2009 at 8:56 pmDon’t you belong over on the Gingrich-pornstar thread?
So now they are complaining abeout the ad. I am sure they didn’t complain about anything they read. Same story as the last time. Sorry I don’t by it. There are way to many other stories out there about Canada and their health care problems and Britian with their problems.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:57 pmIn a nut shell. Cry me a river build a bridge and get over it. You said it and now you want to take it back. Sorry deal with it. If you didn’t mean it in the first place then you should never have said it to start with.
No One can make you say something you don’t want to say. So you said it that is how you feel. It’s about time people were held responcibly for what they do and say.
Outlaw,
Has any nation that ever adapted universal health care coverage ever gone back to a privatized system anyone on Earth?
September 11th, 2009 at 10:35 pmanyone = anywhere
September 11th, 2009 at 10:45 pmTo Outlaw284
Most of the “horror stories” you have heard are simply false. There are 100 times more horror stories in the US system in a year than there are in the Canadian system in a decade.
Shona Holmes, the Canadian you’ve seen in an ad, is a fraud, by the way. The “brain tumour” from which she “would have died” in Canada actually had a non life threatening benign cyst, and the wait time she talked about was only a third of what she said. If she had had a real brain tumour, she would have been looked after in days. As it was, she had a non life threatening benign cyst, so had to wait for people with real brain tumours to get treatment first. Most Canadians who go to the US for treatments are know it alls who think they know more than their physicians.
US medical insurance companies stand between patients and physicians, rationing care for profit and dictating treatment decisions to physicians. Canadians have the freedom to choose their doctor and to do treatment as the physician feels it should be without outside interference.
It is not the Canadian system that kills people. It is the US system that kills people because they’re unfortunate enough to have a pre existing condition or who get too sick or cannot afford health insurance.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:04 amOutlaw284 says:
There are way to many other stories out there about Canada and their health care problems and Britian with their problems.
Most of which are lies. And all of which are utterly dwarfed by the vast weight of stories about America and our health care problems, even if you adjust per-capita. The simple fact of the matter is that by any statistical measure, we pay more per-person for health care in America and receive much worse health care than any other industrialized nation in the world.
.
Outlaw284 says:
You said it and now you want to take it back.
I never said any such thing.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:52 amThank you for your sharing.!
September 16th, 2009 at 10:37 pmWho is the author? The style and tactic of accusing someone else of what they are themselves guilty of is reminiscent of Rove and the Republican Party estetik cerrah.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:39 am