Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will travel to Canada in late January to get hernia surgery, related to the attack he sustained from a neighbor in 2017, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
Notably, Paul is adamantly against socialized medicine and has called the idea of a national public health care system “slavery.” Canada enjoys publicly funded universal health care, but the hospital Paul will visit is privately administered, his spokesperson said.
Communications director Kelsey Cooper called Shouldice Hernia Hospital “a private, world renowned hospital separate from any system and people come from around the world to pay cash for their services.”
There is some nuance here. Though Shouldice is a private, for-profit hospital, it does almost all of its work under contract with various provincial governments. Thus, the majority of the hospital’s income comes from patients who pay their bills through their government-funded health plans, according to the Globe and Mail.
Canadian citizens pay into the country’s single-payer health-care system through federal and provincial taxes. Each province or territory has a health-care plan under which they can get free care. (What the country has is similar to the Medicare-for-All concept endorsed by some Democrats.)
Private, for-profit hospitals were outlawed under Ontario’s 1973 Private Hospitals Act, but already-existing facilities, including Shouldice, were exempted.
This story was updating following comments from Sen. Paul’s spokesperson to clarify that the hospital in question is privately owned.
So let me get this straight-
The guy who votes routinely to let 40,000 Americans die every year only for lack of healthcare is himself flying to Canada to have surgery- which his U.S. congressional Healthcare plan will pay for- i.e. which the American Taxpayer pays for.
Incredible.
Only in Republikan Amerika.
P.S. Even as American Government Employees are going without pay and being furloughed, you and I are paying for Rand Paul’s trip to see a Canadian doctor.
For Paul as a guy who has often publicly declared that “…the U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world”, I think this is a bit of a reversal.
Well from what I have seen on most right wing sites he will have to wait at least a year for surgery so maybe some good will come out of this…
Stop him at the border.
Do as I say, not as I do. Oh and screw you anyway.
And what’s the big deal about hernia surgery? Hospitals do it on an almost daily basis. It’s not like he’s getting his Hair Club for Men implants.
Maybe he’s making his escape to Russia.