You mean their last presidential election, and I think you’re right. For Sarah Palin, the Bush Doctrine is like pornography; she can’t define it, but she sure likes it.
I’d be starting to get worried if I were you. If this dingbat ever gets elected Canada’s going to get a LOT more crowded. 
I still don’t understand why would they go after an American politician, in Ohio, on an American book tour about Canadian health care. I can almost see it if it’s in Toronto or Calgary but Ohio?
I know Calgary is growing, but that calls for more capacity, not necessarily more facilities. One hospital might be much better than two, if the hospital is larger, or more modern, or allows for centralization and mrging of specialized functions like oncology.
In fact, no provincial government in the entire history of Canada has spent as much on public health care as the Conservative government in Alberta (per capita, obviously) and they’ve done some pretty innivative things in finding efficient ways to deliver health care. It’s one of the better systems in the country by most measures. I’m sure its got its problems, but you don’t think the other provicnes don’t too, right?
Well, obviously not.
Much of the problem in the US, of course, is that their system really isn’t private OR public, and isn’t even a logical mix of private and public the way most countries have; it’s an awful, convoluted mix of systems, with some people covered under government programs, some not, and some covered for some things but not others. That’s why President Obama’s having the trouble he is; his proposal, truth be told, is just another band-aid atop a festering corpse, not a real new way of doing things.
Sarah Palin, truth be told, is not defending private health care, she’s just (more or less blindly) opposing change for the sake of being in opposition. The current system in the USA isn’t a full blown private market or anywhere near it; Americans spend as much or more as Canadians, per capita, on public health care. (Exactly how the two numbers compare depends on the exchange rate.) If she was legitimately, ideologically opposed to public health care, she’d be publically opposed to Medicare, Medicaid, the PDB plan, and all that shit. But of course she’s never, that I am aware, advocated for the elimination of those plans.
Come along with me to an emergency room in America. You will always sit for many hours, unless you are having a heart attack. Then they will dun you for payment . But you can declare bankruptcy. How many Canadians declare bankruptcy when they get sick? How many people suffer the pressure of having the family fall apart financially while you are too sick to do anything about it?
We do not have competition in health care. We do not have competition in health insurance. We have monopolies that revel in price fixing and high costs. We have the 37th best health care in the world. Why would you aspire to that?
The delusional, right wing libertarians are unable to see the disaster that unfettered capitalism is. It needs constant and strong intervention to keep from becoming harmful to the economy.
It was a hospital. It held patients. Destroying it and not replacing it doesn’t increase capacity.
When they’re shutting things down and no longer covering certain treatments, learning how much they spend doing it does not impress me. Alberta just tossed away additional revenue from premiums whereas I’d have gladly paid double if it meant I could get physiotherapy treatments or kept beds from closing or kept experienced nurses from being encouraged to retire early.
Of course not.
There’s a lot of inertia in a country of 300 million. A new way of doing things doesn’t happen overnight. As of January 1, 2010, all health insurance is public health insurance, or something similar? No way. Even if it didn’t cause the AM radio crowd massive fits, it’d be impossible to implement in one fell swoop. It seems to me that a big part of the problem is odious insurance practices. I’m quite simply shocked at the way US insurers do business. It seems to boil down to giving Americans the chance to make roughly two car payments each month for the privilege of maybe, possibly receiving necessary medical care. If the price isn’t too inconvenient to the insurer.
That’s not the only problem, of course. You’re right in that it’s also a convoluted mess. I liked making 4 payments each year and not worrying about having to jump through stupid hoops to see a doctor my insurer picked out rather than one I prefer.
Yes, she’s just bleating “socialism BADBADBADBAD!!!” without knowing what she’s talking about. She can still take a long walk off a short pier.
But why do we (or 22 Minutes I guess) care what an American politician, in America, on an American book tour thinks? It has zero bearing on what we’ll do anyway. It looks more like a braying “Conservatives suck!” for no discernible reason I can see.
But…but…she’s hot!!!
They don’t care about what she thinks. They thought that she’d be an easy target for a joke that would play well with their audience. Nothing more to it than that.
I’d like to add I am Canadian and the health care system here is good, despite the scaling back of different services paid for by the government…which is a bit of a piss-off but better than nothing I guess.
And I would also like to add I would smell Sarah Palin’s feet all day long…she is THAT hot.
Sorry, yeah, I was getting my people I was talking to confused. “Your” equals “U.S. American.”
Obviously, if you’re a fervent supporter of Canada’s national health plan, the idea of dismantling it will outrage you.
But since this was SUPPOSED to be a comedy show, where exactly is the comedy?
If she’d started stammering, or if she’d used a silly malapropism, or made a tasteless joke, you’d have something to laugh at her for. But Sarah Palin DIDN’T’t stumble over her words. She didn’t commit any gaffes. She didn’t say anything offensive. She simply stated her opinion (one shared by MOST conservatives) when someone posing as a journalist asked for it. What is she supposed to be embarrassed about?
Her only “mistake” was not recognizing a comedienne from a TV show that practically NOBODY in the USA knows or cares about. Big deal.
Well, since you’re SO much smarter than Sarah Palin, why don’t YOU tell us the definiton of “the Bush Doctrine”?
Oh, that’s right… there never WAS a formally stated “Bush Doctrine.” There was a Monroe Doctrine, a Truman Doctrine, and a Brezhnev Doctrine. But the “Bush Doctrine” was a figment of Charlie Gibson’s imagination.
Sarah Palin was a terrible candidate. She handled herself pitifully in most interviews. She has a LOT to be embarrassed about. Not knowing the tenets of a nonexistent “Doctrine” isn’t one of them.
The term “Bush Doctrine” was in wide use long before Charlie Gibson used it in the Palin interview. It need not be self-applied to be as real as your other examples, which were terms adopted by the press at the time they were popularized. “Doctrines” are rarely called that by the administrations promoting them.
Sorry, but using “Bush Doctrine” as if it had a clear, established, concrete meaning was silly. MOST interviewees wouldn’t have been sure what “Bush Doctrine” was supposed to mean.
I think Gibson used an relatively obscure term to make Palin look bad. That was sneaky, but it was also unnecessary. There was no need to resort to trickery to expose Sarah Palin as uninformed. She WAS uninformed. I’m not convinced that she’d have done any better if Gibson had used a different term.
Look, even I know what Bush Doctrine means in broad terms. Minimization of multilateral engagement and conflict resolution, aggressively pursuing military approaches to perceived threats (preemptively as required) and a general good/evil - us/them approach to the world. A candidate for the VP position should at least be able to articulate as much and be able to discuss it intelligently. Or even better, I suppose, establish the context of the question and adapt as needed.
Besides here’s some cites about just how unused the name was in by 2008
Bush and the World Sept/Oct 2002
The End of the Bush Revolution July/August 2006
To Lead the World: After the Bush Doctrine Nov/Dec 2008
All articles are from Foreign Affair Magazine.
But MOST interviewees with any awareness of the world would have at least heard of it and could provide their own definitions. Or at least dodged it and discussed the Cheney approach to foreign policy in at least minimal depth.
If I don’t, will that make Palin’s inability to define what she supports less laughable?
So the doctrine she claimed to support does not exist? I thought you were defending her.
Suit yourself. If she’d said there’s no such thing as the Bush Doctrine, maybe you would have a point. But she didn’t.
It is hardly so ambiguous that a vice-presidential candidate shouldn’t be expected to discuss it.
All vice-presidential candidates should.
MOST interviewees are also not qualified to be vice-president.