This Time, We Won’t Scare

Perhaps you’ve seen those television commercials denouncing health care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.

Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us. That seems unlikely now, but what if he’s a covert Canadian plotting to impose ... health care?

Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of “real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care.”

So here’s a far more representative “real-life story.”

Diane Tucker, 59, is an American lawyer who moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Like everyone else there, she now pays the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care.

Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her right hand.

“I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out,” she remembered. “But I had trouble standing.”

A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.

“An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me straight upstairs to the CT scan,” she recalled. A neurologist explained that she had suffered a stroke.

Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. “The doctors were great, although there were also a couple of jerks,” she said. “The nursing staff was wonderful.”

Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren’t as opulent as at some American hospitals. “The food was horrible,” she said.

Then again, the price was right. “They never spoke to me about money,” she said. “Not when I checked in, and not when I left.”

Scaremongers emphasize the waits for specialists in Canada, and there’s some truth to the stories. After the stroke, Ms. Tucker needed to make a routine appointment with a neurologist and an ophthalmologist to see if she should drive again. Initially, those appointments would have meant a two- or three-month wait, although in the end she managed to arrange them more quickly.

Ms. Tucker underwent three months of rehabilitation, including physical therapy several times a week. Again there was no charge, no co-payment.

Then, last year, Ms. Tucker fainted while on a visit to San Francisco, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital. But this was in the United States, so the person meeting her at the emergency room door wasn’t a doctor.

“The first person I saw was a lady with a computer,” she said, “asking me how I intended to pay the bill.” Ms. Tucker did, in fact, have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek reimbursement.

Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.

Ms. Tucker has since lost her job in the recession, but she says she’s stuck in Canada — because if she goes back to the United States, she will pay a fortune for private health insurance because of her history of a stroke. “I’m trying to find another job here,” she said. “I want to stay here because of medical insurance.”

Another advantage of the Canadian system, she says, is that it emphasizes preventive care. When a friend was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic, he was put in a free two-year program emphasizing an improved diet and lifestyle — and he emerged as no longer being prone to diabetes.

If Ms. Tucker’s story surprises you, you should know that Mr. Scott’s public relations initiative against health reform is led by the same firm that orchestrated the “Swift boat campaign” against Senator John Kerry in 2004. These commercials are just as false, for President Obama is not proposing government-run health care — just a public insurance element in the mix.

No doubt there are some genuine horror stories in Canada, as there are here in the United States.

But the bottom line is that America’s health care system spends nearly twice as much per person as Canada’s (building the wealth of hospital tycoons like Mr. Scott). Yet our infant mortality rate is 40 percent higher than Canada’s, and American mothers are 57 percent more likely to die in childbirth than Canadian ones.

In 1993, the “Harry and Louise” commercials frightened Americans into abandoning health reform. Let’s ensure those scare tactics don’t work this time.

City Hall, xxxx xxxx xxxx  xxx

xxxxxxxxx,  xxxxxxx

By facsimile: xxx - xxx - xxxx

Dear Mayor xxxxxxxx:

The City of xxxxxx and the xxxxxxx Police Department have caused me eight years of grief. I ask you, as  xxxxxxx  Mayor and as chair of the xxxxxx Police Board, to end police harassment against me and to redress the situation.

Recently I noticed an item in “The Downtown xxxxxxx Enquirer” internet newsletter which prompted me to write to you. The excerpt which follows deals with my employment as Director of xxxxx Centre and with my firing by the City.

News and opinions from the Downtown xxxxxx

The City can’t fire Director xxxxx xxxxx and she knows it. They terminated a previous xxxxxxx Director, xxxxxx xxxxxx. (She seemed competent enough, actually, but there are a lot of politics around xxxxxx, not to mention the fact that she and her ex-husband who wields influence at xxxxxx weren’t exactly on an extended honeymoon, and she had made the mistake of speaking up about a sexual harassment issue.) She sued the City and the settlement was hush hush. The City doesn’t want another pay- through-the-nose settlement with xxxxx. Like the advice, tinged with misogyny, that divorce lawyers give: “It’s cheaper to keep her.”  Saturday, December 02, 2006 7:45:29 PM

It's interesting to see what the community thinks happened. Here’s the real story .

While I was employed as Director of xxxxxx Centre by the City of xxxxxxx from 1997 to 1999, my ex-husband, xxx xxxxx, and his partner, xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx, controlled this urban core, special community centre through a community organization, and indeed had done since it opened. For some reason, the powers at City Hall have thought that they needed xxx  xxxxx and xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx to keep in line the poorest neighbourhood in Canada population who use the facility.  xxx xxxx and xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx initially wanted me to be director there because they mistakenly thought I would be their creature and take orders only from them. Because my social views were not greatly divergent from theirs, I did not anticipate a problem in dealing with them. At first I did not realize that their efforts were not about providing excellent services for the community and furthering democratic ideals there, but rather were directed toward maintaining their personal control of the centre.

I was serious about doing a good job, and my manager, the Director of Community Services (he reported only to the City Manager), had plans about improving the centre and cleaning up the drug crime on the corner where the centre sits. Although I tried to please the volunteer community board through which xxx xxxxx and xxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxxx exerted their control, I took my orders from my boss at the City.

I was appalled when I started to realize the state of affairs at the centre, and I shared everything with my boss. Some of the finances were uncontrolled, there was obvious theft, a drug addict who hadn't been to work for months was on the payroll, people were coming to work late and under the influence of alcohol, and the community board encouraged community centre member/users to see the employees (who were union members) as their servants who needed to be kept in their place. As a former union business agent, this last horrified me. I knew that the only way to improve the operations of the centre was to give both users and staff the respect due them and to foster a symbiotic relationship between the two groups.

There was a core group of dedicated, effective, and conscientious City workers at the centre who were badly treated, made to work unnecessary weekends and holidays, and were subjected to badgering and questioning by the centre users as well as frequent visits from xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx [ex-husband's partner], who asked them their personal business and "counselled" them. I made myself unpopular with the volunteer community board by instituting two or three staff meetings a year (with breakfast) which meant the centre was closed for a few hours first thing in the morning. I sent employees to courses, spent time with them, gave them City minutes of meetings, etc. I tried to give the staff a sense of their own worth and to empower them, (most of them were very good workers) but it was uphill all the way.  xxxxx Centre was the most dysfunctional work environment I've ever known, and the city employees' union seemed to be dysfunctional, too.

Physical working conditions for the staff were largely unpleasant and unproductive. When the City installed air conditioning on the third floor of the centre at my request (on one of my first days at work, the temperature in third floor offices was 35' Celsius) I was vilified for being undemocratic and for not leaving decisions about the building up to the community people who use it. When I wanted to create a satellite program in xxxxxx Park, I was accused of being undemocratic because the suggestion had not come from centre user-members. When I had a small office installed for staff members, I was accused of being undemocratic and only worrying about staff who were paid too much and were making their livings “on the backs of the people”. The community association newsletter began to attack me in print. Eventually xxx xxxxx and xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx stopped speaking to me.

Through all this, I was in constant touch with my boss who came to meet with me at the centre regularly. I carried out his instructions. I never took any initiative of my own without discussing it with him, and obtaining his permission. He was glad to have, for the first time, an active director at the centre. He had plans for his department, and for himself, too (during this time he applied for the job of City Manager and lost to the current incumbent). Whenever asked by anyone, I made a point of saying that I liked my job and I liked my boss.

By the way, the director of xxxxx Community Centre is now paid $40,000 more per year than I earned. Perhaps the City had to raise the salary in order to get qualified people to apply. In the past it had been extraordinarily difficult to fill the position.

At some point, xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx [ex-husband's partner] began to phone my boss and to demand that he fire me. He told me about the calls and said that he was polite and refused. Then she became angrier. After a phone call during which she shouted at him and hung up on him, she began to phone the City Manager to ask that I be removed from the position. I know that she lobbied other people for my termination, too, and that she had other people call the City Manager. In January, 1999, there was a meeting with my boss, me, and representatives from the centre’s community association, chiefly,  xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx. The following week I was accused by xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx of giving the minutes of that meeting to another community association which she viewed as a rival.

On February 1, 1999, the xxxxxxxx Police illegally placed me under camera and audio surveillance in my home, and under telephone and computer surveillance at my office. I understand that Inspector (as he was then) xxxx  xxxxx was instrumental in this undertaking. Were they hoping to catch me conspiring with some other neighbourhood group so they could entrap me and fire me? The arrogance of their actions and their contempt for the law are staggering.

My boss unwisely told the group of managers who worked for him and met with him regularly about the surveillance. Two of them told me. I waited a while, put up with it, and thought that the problem would blow over and that the surveillance would be removed. I intended to stay at the City while I looked for another job. Then one day my boss repeated to his other managers a comment I made during a phone conversation with a friend, but he took it out of context and made it embarrassing for me. Of course people told me. I used my community centre office phone to call his City Hall office voicemail - I told him that I knew about the surveillance and that I was angry that he was repeating my illegally taped, private conversations to his managers, and I demanded that the taps be removed from my phone. I knew that the City Manager would also hear my message.

My boss was fired that day, about six weeks previous to my dismissal by the City, and he was not even allowed to remove his personal belongings from his office. His employment was terminated after 24 years because he told other people about the police surveillance placed upon me. However, some source in the City put it about among his managers that he was fired because I had accused him of sexual harassment. No one ever mentioned this to me, but some members of his team treated me as though I were invisible from that day on. Now here again is a suggestion of my complaining about sexual harassment in the little newsletter blurb above. Even if he had been so accused, presumably someone would have talked to me, there would have been a proper process, and he would not have been removed in that manner.

There is a weird aspect to all this, though. My boss was quite taken with me - my energy, my competence, my ability to see through the foolishness; and I happened along at a time when he was determined to make changes in the centre. He always sat next to me at meetings, even those at City Hall (I was required to take part in various neighbourhood and City departmental groups) and a few times he bumped me with his knee under the table, etc., and he generally paid too much attention to me. He was not a scary man, and I'm not afraid of mashers and I can take care of myself, and I elected to ignore it. However, I was worried that xxx xxxxx and xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx would be the recipients of gossip about me if someone noticed.  It's too bad really - in a healthy employment environment my boss and I could have forged a proper work partnership that would have made needed changes and would have helped the poor people of the urban core.

I never told anyone that there was anything untoward in my boss' actions. Really there wasn't much, and I was only worried about the perceptions of people who didn't wish me well in any case. But I did tell my physician of seven years, Dr. Bxxxxx, about it once I realized that I had been placed under police surveillance. He made notes in my patient history which he showed me on the computer screen in his office, but that entry was later deleted when my medical records were revised by police. After I was fired by the City, I told my son and his girlfriend about it (they lived in Rhode Island), and I then repeated the information to the lawyers who represented me in an unlawful dismissal suit. During the suit, my former City boss testified at an examination for discovery on my behalf. [As part of his testimony he said that he had not known how old I was and that I look "many, many years younger than my age".]  My lawyer had arranged his appearance, as we had had no contact since the day of his dismissal. Within a week of his testimony, he left Canada for a position in the xxxxxxxxx, and I understand that he is now employed in the United States.

The City of xxxxxxxxxx delayed my firing for six weeks after my boss’ termination. During that interval,  xxxxxxxxx Police were doing something awful to me that I didn't know about at the time. While I still worked for the City, while the surveillance was underway, the police began to interview people in my life and to destroy my reputation. They went to people who had known me through the years and had worked for me at Provincial Court, where I created and for 17 years managed a project to assist mentally disordered offenders, and they concocted stories about me. Police said that I was a liar and that I might unfairly accuse my boss of sexual harassment (this means that they were already talking to my doctor at that time and looking at my medical records).  xxxxxxxx Police prompted three or four of my disaffected former employees who had lost a union grievance against me to put forth a disgusting story that I had told similar lies about one of the judges (a man the police don't like). Later, after my employment had been terminated, xxxxxxxxxx Police further destroyed my reputation by lying and telling people that I was unhinged by the firing and that I was a danger to those I thought had betrayed me.  My ex-husband was particularly terrified of me during this period of time.

As well as civic employees facing possible criminal charges for the illegal surveillance, the City must have really been afraid that I would sue and receive a "pay-through-the nose settlement" as the newsletter writer above describes it. After I had been fired, the police contacted every lawyer I phoned asking for help. No one would take the case at first although many lawyers owed me favours from court. Finally, a man who did accept it charged me three thousand dollars and then refused to continue. My second lawyer would agree only to negotiate a kind of blameless settlement using the usual schedule of amounts generally payable when a manager is fired. Thanks to information he had received from xxxxxxxx Police, his last lawyer seemed genuinely amazed at my examination for discovery that I was an excellent witness and not some raving, sex-crazed maniac.

The newsletter article above is wrong about the size of the suit settlement, of course. Because I was such a fine witness on my own behalf, I did receive a good settlement in terms of the amounts usually paid. But I had been employed by the City for less than two years and it was not a huge settlement. And of course, it did not take into account any of the dreadful things that the City had done to me. The City kept me working six weeks after my boss had been fired simply so police would have time to destroy my reputation and prevent me from being able to find a lawyer who would believe in my cause and then launch a truly profitable law suit.

Then to add to injury and criminal activity, xxxxxxxx Police denounced me to the RCMP and to an American security agency. Local police prompted the same former disaffected employees who had a failed union grievance against me to claim that I had disclosed information to them that indicated that I am a security risk to the United States. There is not an iota of truth in that, and the suggestion is mind-boggling to me. American government agents have been dealing with my highly conservative nuclear and extended family in the U.S. with the result that I am now estranged from all my relatives. I hold dual citizenship in both Canada and the United States, but it is no longer safe for me to travel south of the border. In August, 2004, I wrote a submission for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of xxxxxxxxxxx about the horrible effects of FISA and the Patriot Act on my life, and that brief is now a matter of public record if you wish to read it.  But the Americans only entered into my life because xxxxxxxxx Police invited them to do so through a tissue of lies.

The RCMP became involved in my affairs because an American security agency is interested in me. But because the flimsy information about me from xxxxxxxxxx Police is so lacking in credibility, it’s clear that neither the Americans nor the RCMP believe that there is any basis for persecuting me - and it is a persecution. I am faced with a trio of police agencies in two nations doing unholy favours for each other by ruining my life and by trying to remove me from Canada so that I can never testify against xxxxxxxx Police or other civic employees.

Initially after my dismissal by the City, I tried to find other employment, but City police or the RCMP interfered in each and every interaction I had with a prospective employer. When I applied for a Canadian census manager position, I was actually given a different test than the other applicants. By the time my unlawful dismissal suit was settled, I had re-worked my financial situation so that I could afford to retire. I bought a condominium apartment and I tried to retire to a quiet life of extensive reading, patio gardening, cooking, painting, and pet-keeping. But that was not to be. (By the way, the City withheld my settlement for months in the hope that my apartment purchase would fall through - see my letter to Mayor xxxxxxx xxxx in City files.)  Further, my complaint to the Police Complaint Commissioner was dismissed.

xxxxxxxx Police and the RCMP have been inciting my condominium neighbours to help to criminally entrap me, or at least to drive me out of my apartment, for more than five years and I have been defrauded of thousands of dollars (complaints have been lodged with both the Financial Institutions Commission and the Real Estate Council of xxxxxx). My medical treatment has been interfered with and compromised to the point that I woke up on a respirator in hospital. My life history has been rewritten. I have been isolated and alienated from my family and former friends. When I took a bridge course, both the instructor and one of the students were enrolled by police in a plan to criminally entrap me. A friend of my youth, who had been enlisted to try to compromise me through an email correspondence, told me on the phone in a fit of remorse that I am breathing substances in my own apartment which are designed to make me sick. My two cats were poisoned, one of them died, and the second cat’s veterinary care was interfered with by police. When I attempted to join a church, after a visit there from police, an eucharistic minister I had never seen before chased me up the aisle and tried to pry a communion wafer out of my mouth.

The short preceding paragraph is just a sampling of the harassment and abuse which has been visited upon me. It would be a monumental task to list and describe the eight years of misery to which I have been subjected by xxxxxxxx Police or at the request of xxxxxxxx Police. It has been truly awful. Every aspect of my life has been destroyed.

It has always been my intention to enjoy a quiet retirement. I would like to move out of xxxxxxx into the xxxxx Valley, but I know that xxxxxxxxxx Police and the RCMP will interfere with the sale of this apartment and the purchase of another, so for the present I am stuck here.

So that’s my story. An unfortunate aspect is that it is still ongoing. xxxxxxxxxx Police continue to work at having me removed to the U.S., where I no longer have any ties, and to prevent me from returning to Canada. Some day police may make me disappear, never again to see my apartment, my pets, or my belongings of a lifetime. I have spent my life performing social service work with ample good results. Can I be so easily deleted by runaway police agencies?

I do not seek notoriety. So many people have been contacted by xxxxxxxx Police about me and are aware of what has been done to me by xxxxxxxx Police, that it’s impossible that this affair can remain a secret forever. However, I am essentially a private person, and I don’t relish the idea of a public scandal, though I do fear that my reticence has made me an easier target for police agencies.

I write to you, Mr. Mayor, to ask you to instruct xxxxxxxx Police to remove themselves immediately from every aspect of my life. Further, I request that you communicate with the RCMP on my behalf and inform that police agency that the City of xxxxxxxx no longer requires that I be removed from Canada.

There is a moral imperative implicit in my situation and in my requests, Mr. xxxxxxxx. After such a plethora of bad actions toward me by the City of xxxxxxxx, it is time that someone takes a principled and correct stance in this matter. You, as Mayor of xxxxxxxx, can do the right thing.

Yours truly,

xxxxx

Cc:  Two City Councillors;  a criminal lawyer QC who is on the Police Board