As a Canadian...I am pleased to know our government is taking steps to protect us against zombies. Good work.
While Gotham City's Batman spends most of his time fighting crime, Toronto's Batman just kind of wanders around and screams at people. I don't know if this is because there's a lack of crime to fight in Toronto, or if this Batman just lacks in the work ethic department, but it does seems kind of appropriate somehow. I mean, if Canadians get a decent health care system they really shouldn't get the good Batman, too, right? Thanks to Craig K. for the tip.
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This money would go into provincial general revenues. To simplify a complex formula, the EPF entitlement could be seen as consisting of two components. Part of the funds were in the form of "tax transfers" whereby "the federal government agreed with provincial and territorial governments to reduce its personal and corporate income tax rates, thus allowing them to raise their tax rates by the same amount.
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Sorry, Toronto Batman - I see your attempt at awesome, but out here on the Wet Coast, we have both Darth Fiddler and Super(Gord)Man.
Plus the guy who runs around Beacon Hill Park wearing only a Speedo. Even during the winter.
Dear Toronto Batman,
I have received multiple complaints about The Batman yelling at the fair citizens of Toronto. As well as scaring young children by proclaiming that, "My parents are dead!!", and that he discards his beef jerky wrappers all across the town.
Be it known that as of now, the Toronto Batman franchisee is under a probationary period of 30 days, wherein he has the allotted time to rectify his un-Batman like behavior or I will have to re-assign the Toronto Batman franchise to a more deserving crime fighter.
Sincerely,Bruce WaynePresidentBatman Inc.
Sigh... with everything that The Dark Kanigget does for the people of Toronto, you'd think someone would come to his rescue when he needs to eat jerky...
Awesome! :P
DID I JUST WATCHED BATMAN SINGING "FRIDAY" FROM REBECCA BLACK? BWAAHAHAHAHAH OH WAIT MY caps lock is on
It was okay, but the guy really should have been someone who could keep a poker-face better. A smiling/smirking Batman just doesn't do it for me. One of the biggest shticks about the Joker being Batman's arch-rival is that they're so opposite... Batman always scowling, Joker always smiling. Ultra-serious versus a clown. So, Smiling!Batman just isn't appropriate. :P
I actually did a stand-up show a couple months ago and this guy was the Headliner. He talkeda bout doing this. I thought he was making it up. Apparently not.
There's something magical about Batman asking for help opening a beef jerky wrapper. You'd think he'd have some kind of knife in the utility belt...
Remember this is the guy who didn't bother to stock any anti-dog devices in his belt when he knew there was a high risk of fighting guard dogs. He had an ultra-sonic bat-pager in the first movie that could've been used to freak out the dogs. Even a can of pepper spray would've worked. But no, Batman would rather waste his time being tackled to the ground like a tosser than take precautions against four legged fiends.
At Michigan State University, there was a guy who walked around in a Gorilla suit and did almost exactly this every weekend. Except for the Batman thing, the yelling, and the awesome. It was mostly just a guy in a very smelly gorilla costume being obnoxious. *sigh*
Well, only in comparison to the broken American system, admittedly. We pay less and live longer than they do.
(Although it'd probably be comparable to the better European countries if the country wasn't so sparsely populated.)
You pay more because it's taxpayer-funded. Which means you pay for health care whether you need it or not. As the old saying goes, "If you think it's expensive now, just wait till it's free."
5-year cancer survival rates in the US are higher than in Canada - .9% higher for women, 8.3% higher for men.
According to a 2008 study by the Fraser Institute, the median clinically reasonable wait time for elective cardiovascular surgery is 5 weeks. The average mandated wait time in Canada is 7.3 weeks.Gynecology: 5.6 / 16.1Internal Medicine: 3.3 / 12.5Neurosurgery: 5.8 / 31.7Ophthalmology: 8.7 / 22.5Orthopedic Surgery : 11 / 36.7Otolaryngology (ENT): 6.8 / 16.9Urology: 3.9 / 12
The WHO rates the US #1 in nonemergency responsiveness, ahead of Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand and the UK.
Among the English-speaking nations listed above, only the US has an average nonemergency surgical wait time of less than a month.
Your contention that Canadians "live longer" is only true in the most technical sense...the difference is less than 2 years for women and less than 3 for men, and the difference tightens for post-60 life expectancy.
While Americans have higher rates of prostate cancer, the mortality rate per 100,000 people is lower.
While Americans have higher rates of breast cancer, the mortality rate per 100,000 people is lower.
The US has 4.2 times as many MRI machines per 1,000,000 people.
The US has 2.7 practicing physicians per 1,000 people, compared to 2.1 for Canada.
The annual hospital acute care days per capita for the US are 0.7, compared to 1.9 for Canada.
The average length for inpatient acute care hospital stays is 6 days int he US, 8.4 for Canada.
You mean the broken system in which anyone who needs medical care is treated, all they have to do is go to a hospital? The same system that has people coming from all over the world to get lifesaving surgeries because they can't afford to sit on the waiting list that is offered in their own countries?
I would say a lot of that extra cost comes from the fact that the the vast majority of major medical innovations come from the U.S. healthcare system. While other countries get to sit back and wait for us to develop new techniques and equipment, then they adopt them when they're proved useful.There is a lot of money that has to pay for new and advanced medical treatments. For full disclosure, I'll say that I do work in the healthcare industry, although I'm not a caregiver, I work in research.I'm just sick of the drumbeat that we have a "broken" system. There are definitely things that could be done better and need improvement, but to act like the system needs to be completely torn down and rebuilt from the bottom up is asinine. We have politicians here who go on and on and act like lack of health insurance means lack of healthcare, and that's just not true, but it seems to be the idea that drives a lot of the criticism.
We achieved universality, which is a good point to the system. But it's not like we're the only country to have done that. Once again, the United States is the *exception* to the rule; go to most first world countries and brag about the fact that everyone here has access to health care and they'll just shrug and say "of course they do - why wouldn't they?"
The system's still incredibly inefficient. There's no reason why we spend so much more per capita than a LOT of countries.
For too long, we've been saying "oh, well, we have much better health care than the US" and leaving it at that. What we should be asking is why our health care is so much shittier than, say, Australia - where they both live longer and spend FAR less money as a percentage of GDP, and happen to be the most comparable country to ourselves in terms of population density. Get our system working as efficiently as theirs and we'd save, oh, about 30 billion... per year.
You could do a lot of good in Canada with an extra 30 billion. Right now, we're just pissing it down the toilet, all because our proximity to the most fucked up health care system outside the third world has made us complacent.
I can see how paying less and living longer could be a flaw. Then again I can see that being a flaw in Canada or any other country for that matter.
