I was interested today to find a hit on my blog coming from the blog run by the editors of Canada’s National Review of Medicine; it was, of course, to my post on the Canadian healthcare system. I checked out the post in which I was referenced, and came away a little disappointed—it consists, in my view, of little more than a willful misunderstanding of the significance of the article by Dr. David Gratzer to which I linked in my post and a drive-by dismissal of several blog posts (mine included) which dealt with that article, followed by a few moments of patting themselves on the back that a lot of Americans would like to be like Canada. There was no effort to engage with any of the evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, which I and others referenced, or any attempt to make a real case for socialized medicine; honestly, I think I got a more thoughtful response in the comments on my post than these folks offered. I would suggest, of course, that you read the NRM editor’s post for yourself and see what you think, since your opinion might be more positive than mine; for my part, though, I think there’s more worth considering in the two comments on that post than in the post itself. I have no objection to the architects and managers of the Canadian system defending it and making the case for themselves—but if they’re going to do so, I think they have the obligation to actually make it, which means taking those who disagree with them seriously enough to actually engage their arguments.
