Kentucky Senator Rand Paul needs hernia surgery after his neighbor, former doctor Rene A. Boucher, physically attacked him last year, in apparent retaliation for constantly piling brush and sticks near his property line. Despite myriad U.S. hospitals that can and do perform this surgery, Sen. Paul isn’t taking any chances with his health.
Instead, he’s going to Canada.
Specifically, he’s going to the Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Ontario, according to court documents filed by Paul’s attorney for a civil suit last week.
If you know anything about Rand Paul—and I mean anything at all—this choice seems a little ... odd, considering that Rand Paul is the biggest proponent of America’s unique, expensive “free market” health care system. He’s also been one of the loudest champions of Donald Trump’s efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act.
In a 2017 Q&A hosted on Facebook Live, Sen. Paul went on and on about how great capitalism is for healthcare, and how socialism ruins everything.
When it comes to healthcare, you don’t want the government to “be in charge”.
But Rand Paul, being himself, had to take this idea to absurd-level STUPID.
Despite every other industrialized nation in the world being able to provide cost-effective universal healthcare for their citizens, the Kentucky senator called such systems out as what he thinks they really are: SLAVERY.
With regards to the idea whether or not you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. It means you have the right to come to my house and conscript me.
That means you believe in slavery.
Yes, Rand. Universal healthcare is essentially just slavery for doctors. Using your logic, our teachers, firefighters, and police are all slaves as well.
This stance, combined with Paul’s Canadian surgery adventure, creates one big question: Since medical care in Canada is publicly funded and provided for all Canadian citizens, why is he supporting a nation that engages in slavery?
Rand Paul’s brilliant spokesperson handled the fallout surrounding the healthcare hypocrisy by calling it “fake news.” Why? Because Shouldice is a ”private, world-renowned hospital.”
OK, three things:
- While it was once a private, for-profit facility, Shouldice now receives most of its funding from the Ontario government.
- The majority of Shouldice’s patients use their government-funded health plan. This provides most of the hospital’s income.
- Notice that no one ever says there’s a “world-renowned” hospital in anti-government Kentucky. Not even their own senator.
Compassion isn’t earned, so I wish the senator well in his recovery. I would never wish upon my worst enemy what happened to his father’s presidential campaign manager, Kent Snyder.
Flying to Canada to get treatment obviously wasn’t an option for Mr. Snyder.
Of course the Paul family loves the free market in healthcare, because it works wonders for wealthy, well-connected politicians. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well for those of us who don’t have campaigns funded by Koch Industries.
The hernia surgery Paul is paying for would likely bankrupt most of his fellow patients at that hospital if they weren’t Canadian. As for the rest of us below the Great White North’s southern border?
Well, let’s just say we can’t afford to be jerks to our psychotic neighbors.