Canadian cell $$$ petition & the iPhone
Given the astronomical iPhone plans that Rogers is foisting on Canadian consumers, it’s a good time to support David McGuinty’s cell phone costs petition.
(McGuinty is a Liberal member of parliament.)
Here’s the petition:
I’ve signed. 15 people have signed in the last 10 minutes while I’ve been putting this post together.
How about you?
[ update from ruinediphone.com ]
On Wednesday July 9, at 3:00 pm EDT David McGuinty, MP, will be making an official video statement on ruinediphone.com. Please check back then.
Interesting!
Apple: US-CANADA price discrepancies
I recently had to pick up the Apple QuickTime MPEG-2 playback add-on. Since I’m Canadian, I paid $30 … while the US price is $19.95.
This is somewhat annoying, given that $20 US is actually worth only $19.60 Canadian today.
iPhone in Canada, Please
The iPhone comes to Canada … well, sorta
Well, I just made my first iPhone call.That’s no biggie to hundreds of thousands of people in the US, of course, but the iPhone has not yet been released in Canada.Mike Skovgaard, a buddy at work, has been buying them in the US and taking them up to Canada to unlock them to work with the Rogers and Fido cell networks. He’s already done it with a few, and showed me his latest. Apparently, Mike was only the third person in Canada to unlock the iPhone.So, review in one paragraph or less? Awesome. Cover flow is great, voice quality is excellent, phone usability is amazing, photos are really cool, Google Maps is incredible, etc. etc. Everything just works, and everything just works the way you think it ought to work.Love it, can’t wait for it to “officially” come to Canada.
Geography in America
Is it any wonder that Americans hardly know where continental Europe is? Check out this excerpt from a AP story on Congress passing a law authorizing Canadian drug imports into the US:
Supporters of the idea say it would save consumers great sums by allowing them to purchase U.S.-made medications from other countries where they often sell for much lower prices than in the U.S. Under current law, consumers are permitted to buy a 90-day supply in Canada. Overseas, drugs can cost two-thirds less than they do in the United States, where prices for brand-name drugs are among the highest in the world. In many industrialized countries, prices are lower because they are either controlled or partially controlled by government regulation.
(Emphasis added.)
When business is evil …
When the business you’re involved in is evil, you know it’s time to get out and start doing something else. Otherwise you will inevitably become evil as well. There are plenty of examples of that in the US health care system, which Sicko is highlighting right now.
Here’s just one of them …
Palmer still owes more than $7,000 for an eight-hour hospital visit that involved, by his estimate, only about 15 minutes of actual care.
That’s after getting more than $4K reduced for the “trauma activation charge,” which is a page to doctors and nurses that are presumably either already at the hospital or on call.
15 minutes of care? $7000?
His room was $2000. His CT scans were $3500. Sucks to be him, obviously … according to the administrator.
“It’s unfortunate that he’s in the situation he’s in,” Nazeeri-Simmons said. “But what is an individual hospital to do? Are we supposed to eat the costs?”
She know’s it’s wrong … but does she take any personal responsibility?
“It’s not us,” she said. “It’s the whole system, and the system is broken. We need to look closely at making changes and at how we can deliver care in a rational way.”
Rational health care? Here’s a couple of clues:
The United States spent an average of $6,102 per person on health care in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Canada spent $3,165 per person, France $3,159, Australia $3,120 and Britain a mere $2,508. At the same time, life expectancy in the United States was lower than in each of these other countries and infant mortality was higher.
I live in Canada, and the health care system is not always perfect. You usually have to wait … I guess sort of like Palmer.
But though I’ve had multiple broken bones, several car accidents, and various other incidents requiring stitches etc., I’ve never had to fear that an accident or an illness would wipe me out financially.
Spending an average of $6K/person and only actually covering about half of the people? That’s evil. I’m a pretty conservative guy, but there can be no better argument against the free enterprise system than American health care.
Theft, larceny, and even murder: that’s what it is.
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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