How Many Canadians Seek Medical Care Outside of Canada?

From National Center for Policy Analysis

There are a growing number of companies providing Canadians with easier access to medically necessary treatments outside the country.  Of course, leaving Canada for medically necessary treatment is nothing new; Canadians have been doing so for many years, either in response to the unavailability of certain treatments, in response to concerns about quality, or in response to long wait times for medically necessary treatment, says Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute's former Director of Health System Performance Studies and Manager of the Alberta Policy Research Center.

How many Canadians receive treatment outside Canada each year, though?  Esmail estimates based on the results of the Fraser Institute's Waiting Your Turn survey and the counts of procedures completed each year in Canada:

• An estimated 44,794 Canadian in total received treatment outside Canada in 2010.  

• This is a notable increase from the 41,006 Canadians estimated to have received treatment outside Canada in 2009.

• The national increase in the estimated number of patients treated outside Canada occurred at the same time as a national increase in the median wait time for medically necessary treatment -- specifically, the national median wait time for treatment after consultation with a specialist was 8.0 weeks in 2009 and 9.3 weeks in 2010.

This estimate likely underestimates the actual number of patients who received treatment outside the country in 2010, says Esmail.

Source: Nadeem Esmail, "Leaving Canada for Medical Care," Fraser Institute, March/April 2011.

For text:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/articles/leaving-canada-for-medical-care.pdf

From the Pastor - The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

T he Feast of the Holy Trinity is an exclamation punctuating the joyous days following Christ’s Resurrection. Throughout His earthly ministry, the Second Person of the Trinity kept hinting at this deepest of all mysteries, as when He said that those who saw Him saw the Father, and that the Father and He are one, and again when He breathed the Holy Spirit on the apostles so that they might forgive sins. It was only as He ascended in glory, that He explicitly announced the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

It is a paradox of our age’s pedantic arrogance that it tends to think of earlier cultures as rough and clumsy, while affecting exasperation at the subtlety of their language. As the Church prepares to use, later this year, a more precise translation of the Creed, there are those who say that the terminology will confuse ordinary people. The Fathers of the Council of Nicaea, and later Constantinople, did not think that their formulas were only for philosophers. Some were gifted thinkers, but it is said that Bishop Nicholas of Myra was so unsubtle that he punched the heretic Arius in lieu of debate.

We understand easily only what we have made. When it comes to what someone else has invented (for me, the computer is an annoying example) it is harder. When it comes to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who was not created at all, it is impossible to understand Him without His help. So Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to “teach you everything” (John 14:26).

The new English translation of the Creed will speak precisely as the Holy Spirit did when He led the early bishops to speak in their own Greek, using words like “only begotten” and “consubstantial.” The sub-apostolic Fathers were free of the bias infecting second-rate intellectuals, who suppose that deep thoughts are too obscure for anyone other than their extraordinary selves. St. Paul was an evangelical failure once when he tried to be a rhetorical success, endeavoring to persuade the professors in the Areopagus university by quoting their own authorities. He certainly had done his research, but he might have been more successful had he quoted Jesus of Nazareth instead of Epimenides of Knossos and Aratus of Soli.

Yesterday was not atypical in our parish. Within about eight hours, I offered the Sacrifice of the Mass twice, heard confessions, baptized a baby, married a young couple, and buried a man. Each of these actions was done in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Though some of the Greek poets had used similar words, the Word of God made them real. That is why St. Paul died in Rome, not for a syllogist but for a Saviour.

Father George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

 

 

Polish Nightingales - 'Laudamus Te' - Antonio Vivaldi

John Shadegg - Making Congress Accountable to the Constitution

Former Member of of Congress John Shadegg addresses the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies & Citizenship.

Ex-CIA: 'Forged Document' Released as Birth Certificate

Gen. Paul Vallely: Congress afraid to probe 'possible felony' over fears of 'black backlash'

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, the chief of Stand Up America, a national security expert and FoxNews contributor, says the “Certificate of Live Birth” released in April by the White House as “proof positive” of President Obama’s Hawaiian birth is a forgery, but the FBI is covering the fraud and no one in Congress is willing to tackle the situation because of fears of a “black backlash” if the failings of the nation’s first black president are revealed.

In an interview today with Greg Corombos for WND, Vallely, who previously has expressed concerns about whether the Obama administration is in violation of the U.S. Constitution, said, “His actual birth certificate has never been found in Hawaii nor released from Hawaii hospital there, Kapiolani hospital there, if it in fact did exist.”

“We’ve had three CIA agents, retired, and some of their analytical associates look at it, and all came to the same conclusion, that even the long-form was a forged document,” Vallely said.

Read the rest of this entry at WorldNetDaily

Cardinal Reports on Progress Toward US Ordinariate for Ex-Anglicans

From CNS

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien

As many as 100 U.S. Anglican priests and 2,000 laypeople could be the first members of a U.S. personal ordinariate for former Anglicans who want to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington reported to his fellow bishops June 15.

‘Nothing More Impeachable’ Than War Without Authorization, Says Constitutional Scholar

From Conservativebyte.com

 

Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for 40 years as a constitutional law expert at the Library of Congress, says Americans and members of Congress should understand that President Barack Obama committed a “very grave offense” against the Constitution in taking military action in Libya without congressional authorization.

“I am not going to recommend that the House Judiciary Committee hold impeachment hearings, but I would like members of Congress and the public to say that nothing would be more impeachable than a President who takes the country to war without coming to Congress, who does it unilaterally,” Fisher told CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey.