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B.C. government sends patients to U.S. while fighting private options in B.C.

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5 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua

Among universal health-care countries, after adjusting for age, Canada ranked highest for health-care spending as a percentage of the economy in 2021 (the latest year of available comparable data). The problem is how we do universal health care

The recent ordeal of Allison Ducluzeau, a wife and mother from Victoria who spent more than $200,000 out of pocket to seek life-saving cancer treatment in the United States, has been widely shared on social media. Unfortunately, Ducluzeau’s story is not unique.

According to Second Street, a Canadian research organization, Canadians made approximately 217,500 trips abroad to seek health care in 2017, long before the pandemic (and related health-care backlogs and delays). To understand why this happens within our universal system, simply look at the data. In 2023, Canadians could expect a median wait of 27.7 weeks between referral to treatment across 12 medically-necessary specialities. In B.C., patients had to wait four weeks to see an oncologist, and another 5.9 weeks for treatment. In fact, the total wait between referral to treatment for oncology in B.C. (9.9 weeks) is now about twice as long as the Canadian average (4.8 weeks).

Moreover, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported last year that, among provinces, B.C. was the second-worst performer in the country in meeting the national benchmark for radiation therapy (that is, receiving treatment within four weeks after seeing a specialist).

Why is this happening? Why do B.C. patients face such daunting wait times for potentially life-saving treatment?

For starters, compared to its universal health-care peers, Canada has fewer medical resources available. After adjusting for population age differences among high-income universal health-care countries, Canada ranked 28th (out of 30 countries) for the availability of doctors, 23rd (of 29) for hospital beds, 26th (of 30) for CT scanners and 19th (of 26) for PET scanner availability.

In response to B.C.’s long delays for cancer care, the Eby government recently instituted a cross-border initiative that sends patients to Washington State for treatment. Although this is good news for some patients, it’s not a long-term solution to our health-care woes. And this selective and short-term initiative is cold comfort to patients suffering from other medical conditions and who remain without local options as they endure long delays for medically-necessary care. Indeed, Allison Ducluzeau needed chemotherapy and could not take advantage of this initiative.

To be clear, Canada’s relative dearth of resources and long wait times are not due to inadequate funding. Among universal health-care countries, after adjusting for age, Canada ranked highest for health-care spending as a percentage of the economy in 2021 (the latest year of available comparable data). The problem is how we do universal health care. Unlike Canada, most other universal health-care countries fund their hospitals according to activity levels to incentivize treatment. And they understand that the private sector is a valuable partner in their universal health-care frameworks.

For defenders of the status quo, private involvement in the financing and delivery of health care within our borders remains out of the question. In fact, the same Eby government that sends B.C. patients across the border for care has fought against private options in B.C. And you can be sure that PeaceHealth St. Joseph Cancer Center and the North Cascade Cancer Center in Washington State—where the Eby government is sending cancer patients—will not be subject to the same limitations the Eby government imposes on private clinics in B.C.

If the provincial government is unable to deliver timely access to care through our publicly-funded health-care system, it should allow patients to pay privately for alternatives within our borders. By forcing patients such as Allison Ducluzeau to leave their loved ones and travel abroad to receive life-saving treatment, our policymakers yet again cling to a stubborn and failed approach to universal health care.

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RFK Jr. says Hep B vaccine is linked to 1,135% higher autism rate

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found newborn babies who received the Hepatitis B vaccine had 1,135-percent higher autism rates than those who did not or received it later in life, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson recently. However, the CDC practiced “trickery” in its studies on autism so as not to implicate vaccines, Kennedy said.

RFK Jr., who is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, said the CDC buried the results by manipulating the data. Kennedy has pledged to find the causes of autism, with a particular focus on the role vaccines may play in the rise in rates in the past decades.

The Hepatitis B shot is required by nearly every state in the U.S. for children to attend school, day care, or both. The CDC recommends the jab for all babies at birth, regardless of whether their mother has Hep B, which is easily diagnosable and commonly spread through sexual activity, piercings, and tattoos.

“They kept the study secret and then they manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link and we know how they did it – they got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data,” Kennedy told Carlson for an episode of the commentator’s podcast. “And they did a lot of other tricks and all of those studies were the subject of those kind of that kind of trickery.”

But now, Kennedy said, the CDC will be conducting real and honest scientific research that follows the highest standards of evidence.

“We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to make the databases public for the first time.”

He said the CDC will be compiling records from variety of sources to allow researchers to do better studies on vaccines.

“We’re going to make this data available for independent scientists so everybody can look at it,” the HHS secretary said.

Health and Human Services also said it has put out grant requests for scientists who want to study the issue further.

Carlson asked if the answers would “differ from status quo kind of thinking.”

“I think they will,” Kennedy said. He continued on to say that people “need to stop trusting the experts.”

“We were told at the beginning of COVID ‘don’t look at any data yourself, don’t do any investigation yourself, just trust the experts,”‘ he said.

In a democracy, Kennedy said, we have the “obligation” to “do our own research.”

“That’s the way it should be done,” Kennedy said.

He also reiterated that HHS will return to “gold standard science” and publish the results so everyone can review them.

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RFK Jr. tells Tucker how Big Pharma uses ‘perverse incentives’ to get vaccines approved

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

Kennedy defended his decision to fire all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which he decried as a tool used to “rubber stamp” vaccines.

The vaccine approval process is a “bundle of perverse incentives” since pharmaceutical companies stand to make billions of dollars in revenue from it, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson recently.

Kennedy appeared on Carlson’s show yesterday to discuss a variety of issues, including the potential link between autism and vaccines and his overhauling of the vaccine advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month.

Kennedy began by explaining that Big Pharma has been targeting academic journals to ensure its products receive favorable reviews.

“The journals won’t publish anything critical of vaccines … there’s so much pressure on them. They’re funded by pharmaceutical companies, and they’ll lose advertising and revenue from reprints,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy then noted that Big Pharma will “pay to get something published in these journals,” before accusing industry leaders of pushing drugs on doctors and of hiring “mercenary scientists” to manipulate data until their product is deemed safe and effective.

The entire complex is broken due to the “perverse incentives,” he lamented.

Later in the interview, Kennedy defended his decision to fire all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June, which he decried as a mere tool to “rubber stamp” vaccines.

This sort of “agency capture” explains the lucrative nature of vaccines, he added.

Kennedy then summarized the “perverse” process as follows:

First of all, the federal government often times actually designs the vaccine, [the National Institutes of Health] would design it, would hand it over to the pharmaceutical company. The pharmaceutical company then runs it … first through [the] FDA, then through [the] ACIP, and gets it recommended.

If you can get that recommendation you now got a billion dollars in — at least — revenues by the end of the year, every year, forever. So, there was a gold rush to add new vaccines to the schedule and ACIP never turned away a single vaccine … that came to them they recommended, and a lot of these vaccines are for diseases that are not even casually contagious.

Kennedy further pointed to the Hepatitis B shot for newborns as an example of how the industry has been corrupted.

In 1999, the CDC “looked at children who had received the hepatitis vaccine within the first 30 days of life and compared those children to children who had received the vaccine later — or not at all. And they found an 1,135% elevated risk of autism among the vaccinated children. It shocked them. They kept the study secret and manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link,” he said.

“We want to protect public health,” Kennedy explained, but “these vaccines … can cause chronic disease, chronic injuries that last a lifetime.”

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