About

OK.  The US probably isn’t ever going to adopt any other country’s health plan because we’re pretty convinced in America we know how to do things better than everyone else.  So…why bother?

Glad you asked...

“I have been treated to the best health care the world has to offer.

And that is right here in the United States of America.”
Rush Limbaugh.

Really?  There’s an awful lot of myth and propaganda out there when it comes to health care systems in other countries.  Long waiting lists!  Inferior quality!  No surgery for grandma!  And the ultimate burn... Socialized Medicine!!!

Here's the deal.  Politicians and pundits are always going to be screaming that “ObamaCare” (or whatever the new reform is 10 years down the road) is "socialized" or "just like the health care in England or Canada".  And therefore we should be afraid… very afraid.  They said that about Medicare and they’ll say it about every other health care reform in perpetuity throughout the universe.

At the other end of the political spectrum, advocates of a single-payer national health care plan sometimes paint a picture of a worry-free health care utopia . . . “if only we had a plan like Canada.” Some say that until we do have a system like Canada or England or France, no other reform is worthwhile.

I’ve read loads of statistics like the famous World Health Organization report ranking US health care at 37^th in the world. But I want to hear it from regular folks who live in some of those 36 other countries.  So I started this completely unscientific blog to tell you some stories I’ve gathered by talking to people from other countries about their health care.  

I want to know just what’s up over there in England and Canada.  I know how it works at my house.  How does it work and not work at everybody else’s house?

And who am I anyway?

Here’s a bit about my checkered past – Up until my late thirties, I was an actress.  Once I moved to LA, I mainly worked on a bunch of commercials with a smattering of television and film.  One day I decided I wanted to do something more fulfilling than selling tacos and deodorant on TV.

It was the early 90s and I got interested in the issue of how to provide health care to the uninsured.  My first campaign as an organizer was a California ballot initiative in 1994 to create a statewide single payer health care system (like Canada!).  

Seventeen years and many campaigns later… I’m on the board of Health Access California, Universal Health Care Action Network, and Southern California Americans for Democratic Action.  I chair health care legislation committees at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, as well as at Americans for Democratic Action. 

I am privileged to be married to a wonderful actor named Kurtwood Smith who supports my activist habit and takes me around the world on location (and vacation) with him. So when he got a job working in Canada this year, I decided it would be a perfect time to start a blog entitled Health Care: On Location!


Oh yeah, my name... Joan Pirkle Smith