Tuesday, April 26, 2005

A Canadian health care urban legend takes root.


Back here, I wrote about a recent op-ed piece in a Tennessee newspaper in which the writer dissed the Canadian health care system, writing the following:

"Canadians aren't so lucky when it comes to emergency medical care. A recent mayor of Toronto was forced to wait eight long hours on a stretcher, with a broken leg, before seeing an emergency room physician. And this was in a Toronto hospital! As excruciating as it sounds to us, Canadians are accustomed to it."

Despite Googling myself silly, I couldn't find anything that even remotely resembled something like that, and the ladies who asked about it in the first place eventually wrote their own piece on it.

Sadly, even though this bears all the earmarks of a piece of ridiculous fiction, it's already been picked up by the right-wing echo chamber, and one can only imagine how long it will be before it's a permanent part of the conservative folklore. Those morons really will believe the damndest things, won't they?

2 comments:

Declan said...

It shouldn't be that hard to dig up - there aren't that many recent mayors of Toronto are there?

CC said...

Oh, there have been some interesting new developments. Coming shortly. Someone else is about to get slapped around.