this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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As a Canadian, I can't see this not fucking over our own access to medication that we need, especially when our own governments are actively trying to dismantle what little socialised healthcare we have. It's going to be like the Ozempic weight loss craze depriving diebetics of the drug, but for every drug. You're one of the wealthiest states in the single wealthiest country in the world, surely you have the means to provide your own citizens with affordable medication, at least much more so than Canada with our tiny population density and comparatively low GDP. To put it not so politely, we shouldn't be punished and forced to take on the burden of providing medication to you simply because you choose not to.
Look we've been trying, the private insurance companies aren't budging. Single Payer is the goal, but we're gonna need to not die in the meantime, so hand over the affordable insulin.
Because Americans are somehow more deserving of not dying than Canadians? If a Canadian diabetic suddenly can't afford Insulin because it's all going to the US, that doesn't matter to you? Should every country be obliged to pitch in to make sure the richest country in the world has enough resources to sustain itself even at the cost of their own citizens' lives, then?
Also, if you recognize that you need Canada's help to, quote, "not die," maybe demanding we "hand it over" isn't the best way sway attitudes about this over here.
America doing imperialism!? :shocked-pikachu:
Seriously though, the further capitalism plunges into crisis, the more the burger empire will look to its allies in the periphery to exploit. It's already happening in Europe.
You act like scarcity's real, take it up with the 1% who create it artificially and stop victim blaming.
And while you're gone, we'll be using dat insulin, because I'm tired of reading about what a bright future this teenager had if only he had just a few million shillings more for this medicine that is pretty much not even slightly hard to obtain in literally every other country.
And this does not apply to Americans too? What's stopping Americans from taking it up with the 1% that artificially create scarcity for you then? And if you can't, what makes you think we can? You think the Canadian 1% is somehow polite and apologetic compared to yours? You just stated that your 1% won't budge when you tried to change them, yet your apparent solution is for us to do the same thing which didn't work in your country?
You tell me to stop victim blaming yet you seem to have no sympathy for how this will affect average Canadians, who are as powerless to do anything about this as average Americans. We're not some bastion of socilaized healthcare, in fact we're considered low tier in terms of the extent of socialized healthcare we have compared to the rest of the world. Canada is as capitalist as the US so this will negatively affect our (the average Canadian's) access to life saving drugs. If you're so against victim blaming then why are you blaming us for being bothered by this when we didn't create the problem and are also victims of the same thing? You rightly make it clear you won't accept this, so why should we?
To be clear, I hate the fact that the average American doesn't have access to medication as much as you do. I don't personally blame any individual American, you or anyone else, for buying drugs from Canada, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with the broader concept as a whole, I should have made that more clear and I apologize for not doing that. The solution should be improving the US's healthcare system and not leeching off Canada's, and again, it's not like there's a lack of resources to do that in the richest country in the world, you're the furthest thing from a developing country. If you said that we should work together to implement non profit-motivated healthcare for both the US and Canada and beyond, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. Maybe that's what you meant, but the way I interpreted it is that you feel entitled to our (somewhat) affordable medication just because we have it and you don't, and we should simply take a share in your problem to lessen it for you while making it worse for us, instead of actively working to make yours or everyone's more affordable.
We've BEEN trying to get improvements to our healthcare system, you guys already have single payer. Your insulin's free, you're complaining for nothing, it's not the end of the world if your people are selling to our people. That's how commerce has worked for millions of years.