What Obama Can Learn On His Trip To Canada Today
Canada's banks are ranked first in world.
Canada's health care system works better than ours, at one third the cost.
And Canada recruits the best and brightest workers from around the world, while the U.S. turns them away.
A few years ago while skiing at Whistler, I was amazed at all the Chinese from Hong Kong who had emigrated to Vancouver a couple of hours away.
I shared the lift with a young woman whose wealthy family owned several factories in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. She told me that they were moving much of their business, setting up operations and buying homes in Vancouver and Whistler.
I asked why her family didn't want to move to California or the US, where most of their products were sold.
She explained that it was such a hassle trying to move to the US. Canada welcomed skilled and intelligent immigrants and those who wanted to set up businesses there. "This country is much saner. It's easy for us to get residency cards," she told me.
This point was brought home when I read Fareed Zakaria's piece in Newsweek in which he wrote that "The U.S. currently has a brain-dead immigration system."
The U.S. issues a miniscule number of work visas and green cards, turning away thousands of skilled, talented students who want to stay and work here.
This issue is personal with me.
My mother came to Baltimore on a Rockefeller Fellowship to study at Johns Hopkins Medical School almost 70 years ago. But she couldn't get a visa to stay and was forced to go back to Chile for four years, where I was born.
Canada welcomes skilled students and scientists from all over the world and has no limit on the number of skilled immigrants who can move to the country. Educated and brainy people can easily get a Canadian Skilled Worker Visa, which allows them to become perfectly legal "permanent residents" in Canada -- no need for a sponsoring employer, or even a job.
"Visas are awarded based on education level, work experience, age and language abilities. If a prospective immigrant earns 67 points out of 100 total (holding a Ph.D. is worth 25 points, for instance), he or she can become a full-time, legal resident of Canada," according to Zakaria.
In 2007 Microsoft --- frustrated by its inability to get H 1B visas for foreign high-tech Indian and Chinese programmers --- decided to park its overseas brains in Canada, a short two-hour drive from its Redmond, Wash. headquarters.
The software giant said it would stock its new Vancouver development center with "highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S." The US is losing thousands of jobs and skilled immigrants and Canada is gaining them. How dumb can we be?
Our universities attract the brightest graduate students in the world, only to then have our country throw many of them out.
On Tuesday, President Obama applauded Canada's banking system.
"One of the things that I think has been striking about Canada is that in the midst of this enormous economic crisis... Canada has shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven't always been here in the United States," Obama said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
"And I think that's important for us to take note ...that it's possible for us to have a vibrant banking sector ...without taking some of the wild risks that have resulted in so much trouble on Wall Street," Obama pointed out.
Canada has not faced a single bank failure, and has avoided the meltdowns and government bailouts in the financial and mortgage sectors.
In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the soundest in the world with a rating of 6.8 out of 7.
U.S. banks ranked 40th, Britain's 44th... Canada's banks currently boast the largest market capitalization in the world. Royal Bank of Canada's market cap is $30 billion, compared to Citigroup's $16 billion market cap.
Sure the Canadians are scared and worried about the financial crisis, but their unemployment is 7% (ours is 7.6%), and with 12 years of budget surplus, they are better positioned to withstand the world financial meltdown.
The other area the U.S. can learn from Canada is in health care spending.
In the United States we spend more than $6,000 per person while Canada spends about $2,500 and gets better results. If you are a male between the ages of 15 and 59, your chances of dying are higher in the U.S. (140 per thousand) than in Canada, 95. On the whole Canadians live about three years longer than Americans.
The long-term answer is obvious. Adopt a single-payer system like Canada's. It's cheaper than what we are now doing. We can't afford not to.
Not socialized medicine. Doctors would remain private. By cutting out the bureaucracy, needless lawsuits, and curbing greed, the U.S. could save 50% of the monies now being squandered, more than enough to cover the 50 million uninsured, according to a General Accounting Office and a Congressional Budget Office report.
Everybody would have access to health care and nobody would go bankrupt because of their health or die when they get sick from a treatable (or preventable!) illness.
Canada's successful health care program is a major reason that American car companies have moved so many formerly American jobs to Canada. Ontario, just a few miles north of Detroit, is now North America's largest auto manufacturing center.
No surprise there. The Canadian government pays for the health care of the workers, saving auto companies, like GM, more than $2,000 on every car produced.
General Motors spends more on worker health care per vehicle in the U.S. than they spend on steel for each car they produce. The three big automakers are HMOs on wheels. No wonder they are in such desperate shape.
The costs of inaction in curbing health care spending are much greater than reforms' would be.
So look around Obama and bring back some ideas that work...
Jfleetwood@aol.com
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Seems the United States may be the last to offer Universal Health Care.
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January 2009,, China Announced Subsidies for Health Care
BEIJING — China announced Wednesday that it intended to spend $123 billion by 2011 to establish universal health care for the country’s 1.3 billion people
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/world/asia/22beijing.html
The plan was passed Wednesday at a session of the State Council, the Chinese cabinet. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao presided.
Xinhua, the state news agency, said the authorities would “take measures within three years to provide basic medical security to all Chinese in urban and rural areas, improve the quality of medical services and make medical services more accessible and affordable for ordinary people.”
One of the comments above related to a video of a person with a malignant tumour and had to rusg to the US for an MRI. I was wondering how long ago that video was made? I know that I can get an MRI tomorrow in downtown Vancouver, almost literally walking in off the street. Sure it will cost $1350 but it's available and immediate.
Since Obama has made his one-day trip to Canada a good question is: What did the Canadians learn from Obama saying he would not upset the trade agreements but would definitely change them, and that Canada’s export of oil to the U.S. would remain hunky-dory because of Obama’s assurances on the U.S. coal industry? Seems the Canadians did not hear or quickly forgot Obama also had said earlier that he would bankrupt the coal industry with taxes and fines for ecological violations.
It is always intriguing to see Liberals making assertions lacking evidence and actually contradicting those assertions with other assertions. Indications are U.S. banks are on the verge of being nationalized, so also health care in the U.S., which is judged inferior to socialized medicine mostly by Michael Moore types. The U.S. is chock full of immigrants – best and brightest to worst and dullest – in some mad mess near totally undeserving of being called a system.
If we had a system we might actually know how many illegals and other groups, say Muslim adherents are here and where exactly they are here. The Canadians might know also of this in Canada.
Like the writer’s mother students come here in droves to study and practice medicine. If Canada’s health care system works better than ours it stands to reason the flocking would be to Canada, Cuba, England, France, Israel and other lauded by some models of better health care. It also stands to reason medical practitioners from Cuba would be able to travel and return to their Communist paradise without defecting or any Cubans risking trips in leaky, improvised vessels to cross dangerous waters to the deplorable U.S.
What exactly do you mean by "assertions lacking evidence"? The author provided rock-solid evidence of the manifest superiority of the Canadian healthcare system: the Canadian system delivers better results, such as a much higher life expectancy and lower death rates, at a far lower cost ($2500 per person versus $6000 per person). And it's also not just "Michael Moore types" who favor single payer/government-financed health care. Most Americans, 59% to be exact, support national health insurance:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/SunMo_poll_0209.pdf
59% of American physicians do as well: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/march/most_doctors_support.php. And just because you brought it up, Cuba does, in fact, have a better health care system than the US. It costs a tiny fraction of ours, life expectancies in Cuba are similar to the U.S., and infant mortality rates are actually lower: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/GlobalHealth/story?id=1266515
In other words, your assertions, not those of the author, are almost entirely fact-free. I suspect the reason is either ideological blindness or professional bias, as you may be an American specialist physician, or a highly paid employee of the drug or insurance industries, to name a few categories of professionals whom profit from our enormously inefficient system. Regardless, the facts are unequivocally on the side of single payer/national health insurance.
I'm not sure what point you were making but Canada has many immigrant doctors living and working there and happy to do so. Did you also ever consider that a large part of the misery Cubans have to live with is a direct result of the American embargo? Did you wonder why Cuba became Communist in the first place? Try thinking about Battista and his coterie of wealthy elites that owned all of the land and businesses in Cuba supported of course by the good old US of A. The Cuban government, its wealthy friends and the US expatriates all treated the ordinary Cubans like animals placed there to serve them. Where have we seen this before? Try every country in the Middle East.
I am a Canadian who lives in Windsor Ontario and I am not lining up on the Ambassador bridge trying to get into Detroit for my health care. In the midst of all the economic chaos around me, I thank my lucky stars that I live in Canada.
I have access to good health care which will not be interrupted if I lose my job, and I know my money is safe in the bank. I am not sure a lot of Americans can say that right now
I live in Canada (province of British Columbia) five months out of the year. My wonderful neighbors are enrolled in Canada's National Health Care plan. Judging from what they tell me, their health care is horrible!!! They have to wait at least five months for an MRI if they have severe disc problems, then wait another two to three months if it's deemed they need the surgery. The wait for mammographies is three months minimum!! One friend's daughter who lives in Calgary has had severe symptons of cardio vascular problems and is still waiting to see a cardiologist after six months!! This is just a sample.
There are more MRI machines in the city of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania than all of Canada!!!
Shameful!!
So, the health care system may work for the bureaucrats who run it in Canada, but it sure as hell doesn't work for the average Canadian citizen.
Health care delayed is health care denied.
I live in Vancouver and I can get an MRI tomorrow if I want to. All it takes is money. So you wait for government paid service or you pay for immediate service but service is always available.
exactly we need user pay and social health care we need both.
My girlfriend is dying from cancer because she was not looked after by GPs in canada in the states it would have been caught a lot sooner and she could have been saved. The GPS in canada do not care its free goverment money so there is no accountablity just lots of red tape.
The quality of our health care in canada sucks big time and we soon will no longer be able to aford it.
Thank you for your kind remarks Mr. Fleetwood. (Yes, that is very "Canadian" politeness.) I am somewhat amused to see this article appearing in a US forum, though wonder if it may have been just a bit of mischief on your part to goad our American neighbours once again with the stick of "socialized medicine".
Perhaps it would be better for Canada in the long run if we kept this myth alive since, as has been pointed out, our rationed, restricted, inaccessible, poor quality, government-run, bureaucratic, wasteful, bloated, taxpayer burdening, SOCIALIST/ COMMUNIST medical system is a competitive advantage for our manufacturing sector (not to mention our general population). So sshhhh . . .
For those who wish to allow their natural curiosity to run amok, perhaps in pursuit of actual facts on which to base their judgments, I also recommend the Frontline documentary cited earlier though it is a little dated now and, typically of programs produced in the US, completely ignores Canada.
The other, more recent, documentary that almost exactly parallels my personal and current experience of living under both Canadian and American medical access systems is Michael Moore's "Sicko". While there is a certain element of dramatisation in the film, the facts he uses and cites are, well, FACTS (as in -- INCONTROVERTIBLE). This documentary also contains very relevant information about the social and economic philosophies that led to the introduction of universal health care systems by countries that have them.
You are reading from an American who listens to Fox (faux) news and because of the low intellegence they believe the nonsense they spew out. I have heard so many stories of how Canadians have to come to the US to get adequate medical care and all of these stories are probably without exception without any basis of truth at all. I am a retired truck driver who used to go to Canada nearly every week for a period of 5 years could never find a Canadian who would even think of changing their medical services for ours. Now if it was so horrible as the right wing in this country says it is wouldn't I be able to find at least one Canadian who thinks it is bad. No certainly it is not perfect but it is many times better than ours and it costs less. I can find nothing wrong with that picture. We are victims of a corporate greed which I fail to see how those near the bottom of the food chain think benefits them but many are sold on it and are not willing to listen to facts which may prove them wrong but will listen to false statements from those on the right which prove their point no matter how foolish they are.
NOT TRUE I am a Canadian who thinks our health care sucks the quality sucks many of us are dying because we can't afford better quality treatment in the states. There is no accountablity because it is free and because of that it gets abused terribly by everyone including the doctors who do not make enough money. All our skilled surgeons etc have long ago left for the states for better money. You get what you pay for!!!!
Without you're health care system many of us would die the red tape involved is huge and it is being milked dry, when it comes to the government people look at it as a money tree and pick it dry. Fox news is absolutley right on this one I know I am a Canadian and that is the truth
100s of people in Canada are dying waiting in line and we will not let people who can afford it pay for their own health care and get out if the line up. stupid and our taxes are at least 10 to 20% higher than you'res to pay for crap. The apathy is unbelievable when you go to the doctor you are allowed 1 question and they telll you to come back and ask again to ask the second question so they can charge the system again. Its a scam do not kid yourself it looks good from the outside and piles of Canadians cross the border every day to get better quality and immediatel help.
I stopped going to the doctor long ago the GPs here are useless they know nothing and you can visit over and over again without getting any help and we have no specialists left and no doctors left they left for the states where they are treated and paid far more
Its not everythin its cracked up to be and the only reason we can afford it is because you all pay fo r the military and we use that.
"go to the doctor you are allowed 1 question and they telll you to come back and ask again to ask the second question"
Well that little dozzy should tell you everything you need to know about the accuracy of the rest of this post. But I guess a handful of people out there will actually believe it. oh well.
Ontario is less than a mile east of Detroit, across from the Detroit river is the city of windsor.
Correction
Windsor (with a capitol W) is SOUTH of Detroit. That should confuse you a bit.
Last year my young, strong, healthy son-in-law became suddenly and seriously ill with an invasive streptoccoccal A infection that morphed into a toxic shock syndrome with complete kidney and lung failure . He spent 38 days in Intensive Care , 2 weeks on a respirator and longer on dialysis . While critical he had one to one, at times, 2 to one nursing care, every medical specialist in the book, multiple xrays, cat scans, MRIs, untold #s blood tests, of bottles of IV and pharmaceudicals, The family's financial cost $O.OO. Tremendous comunication & emotional support from a very attentive, professional staff greatly lessened the emotional toll experienced by family members.
We may have wait times for tests or elective surgeries here in Canada but ,when the crunch comes, care is immediate, skilled, and prepaid! Health care is not free in Canada. We do pay for it from our tax dollars and we who do pay taxes pay for those Canadians who do not for what ever reason. We also would likely go to war if any politician tried to take it away from us.
I saw a video made by a Canadian about his malignant brain tumor.
The Canadian health care system would give him an MRI in 7 months! So, he went to the U.S., got the MRI and was operated on.
The Canadian Health care system would not reimburse him because he didn't get prior approval. Such approval takes 6 months to get.
In England, people have to be treated within 5 hours of getting into the ER. So, what does the health care system do? They keep people in the ambulance until they can be seen. This, of course, decommissions the ambulance and they can't attend to other people.
Isn't socialized medicine wonderful?
Nice story, but of course it's completely untrue. I myself had a MRI about 10 years ago, the appointment was made about 2 weeks after seeing my doctor. If it had been an emergency I could have had it the same day, but it wasn't. The 'substandard care' arguement is a typical boogyman put out there by the lobbyist to scare the pants off of Americans. And it works every time. By the way, there arn't any monsters under your bed, the soviets arn't beaming mind rays at you from their satellites and the Iraqis never had any WMD.
JanP. How do you feel about an American with a malignant brain tumor and NO health insurance. How long does he have to wait before he gets treatment?
*crickets chirping*
I didn't think you'd have an answer to that one.
A Canadian friend of mine died while waiting to see a cancer specialist in Canada; her appointment was for 7 months later. She didn't make it. I like your story about the American with a malignant brain tumor and no health insurance. The answer is they get treatment right away, at least in Texas. And when the hospital/doctors know you have no insurance, they lower the bill to the "poverty" level. I know from experience.
From Canada's westcoast:
Our banks are financially strong because six companies account for 90% of banking activityy. These are primary financial supporters of governing political parties and influence banking laws to their own benefit. They share business, they don't compete for it. They waste little money on customer service, particularly for those not "high net-worth" individuals. Canadian banks discourage customers that do without significant income and assets. They don't support small businesses unless owners have substantial collateral and provide guarantees. No, don't want to emulate Canadian banking. Go back to effective regulation of yours.
The article here is correct about the Canadian medical system, even if many comments are wrong. We've had the same family doctor for 30 years. He's never shuffled us anywhere. Care could not be better. I had total knee replacement 18 months ago. It went off perfectly. I knew well in advance that it would become necessary and chose the timing myself. The operation happened 3 weeks after meeting the surgeon and my out of pocket cost was $12 for my share to buy a cane. Even 8 weeks of physiotherapy was part of the hospital package. The treatment would have been no different if my income were zero or if it were immense.
I recall that medical expenses were the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the USA. In Canada it is simply not a factor. Keep your system if that's what you like.
I like your second paragraph, but not the first.
I don't believe Canadian banks have influence over banking laws. The huge battle over bank mergers tells me the government has no problem saying no. And it's not true to say banks are 'primary financial supporters', all business institutions have limits to the amount they can contribute to political parties.
Banks find they can't influence Canadian government.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012365
"They don't support small businesses unless owners have substantial collateral and provide guarantees." wasn't this a primary reason for the bank failures around the world? Supporting people that didn't have substantial collateral or guarantees? Speaking from personal experience, my bank asked me to provide 30% of the capital needed to start my business and they provided 70%. A fair deal that worked out well for both of us.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183670 -Thanks again Fareed Zakaria
Quote..."In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th."
The big 6 Canadian banks are indeed financially strong. That stability though comes at a price, one paid for by the abandoned lower third of the economy. By absence of competition, our banks grew powerful. Levels of customer service dropped substantially while fees for service rose exponentially. Smaller communities find themselves with no bank branches when, a generation ago, all major banks would have been open for local business.
Our banks are not managed by brighter people. When they got active in banking markets in the U.S. and South America, their fingers were burned badly. They didn't know how to cope with competition.
A few years ago, the proposed mergers among the big six Canadian banks were stopped by public outcry and a cranky prime minister who was having his own fight with bankers over a failing personal investment. The mergers were still on the back burner - by no means forgotten - when the systemic meltdown took place elsewhere.
I believe the American system failed for a number of reasons, the most important of which was a deficit of integrity and lack of effective oversight. But, when you rebuild the U.S. system, don't follow the uncompetitive elements of the northern land. Competition and integrity are necessary elements of successful capitalism.
The health care is so atrocious here in Bush country (Texas) I think my family would be much better off in Canada.
I am damn sick of the United States paying the highest health care costs in the world because of the idiotic ideology that nationalized care is a kind of Socialism we don't already have.. I am appalled that the pharmaceutical companies can charge what the traffic will bear when it comes to life-extending drugs..
We have an income tax, public education where childless individuals support those with multiple kids in school, we are about to announce that owning a home is a God given right, per the foreclosure bailout proposal, and health care is not; now we have a centralized banking system about to nationalize the banks. All of these actions are SOCIALISM. America is ruled by special interests: insurance companies, pharmaceutical lobbies who are raking in vast sums so executives can keep multiple homes and trophy wives.
Health care is in a severe crisis stage. Maybe the next bailout effort will be directed at that issue. I sure hope so 'cause the bridges to be used to shelter the bankrupt are also crumbling.
I have read the comments on this blog and as a Canadian, I can't believe what I'm reading. First off, I think most of the comments re. Canadian Health System is outdated. Having worked in the health care system for over 20 years, I can assure you that our service is not 'basic' care as someone suggested. We have one of the world's best health care system in the world. We have prioritized certain disease which gets immediate treatment such as Cardivascular, orthopedic, cancer, cataract, neurosurgery probably because of our aging population who suffers more from these ailments.
In Ontario we pay an additional $600-900 based on salary to help to offset the cost of our rising health cost because of our aging population and we are not complaining about the additional cost which is a lot cheaper than if we the American system. We also have private health insurance which covers priscription drugs/glasses, physiotherpay etc. Most employers purchase a private group insurance plan and share the cost with employees on a 50/50 basis which is much cheaper than if one had to pay privately.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and held off on immediate treatment(I had predominately ca in situ of the breast which was not as serious) because the surgeon I wanted was on maternity leave, so I chose to wait. I received treatment(surgery) within 1-2 months and radiation therapy and am currently in followup care.
Excellent post.
Here is information coming straight from someone who has worked in Canadian health care for over 20 years and has also used the system for a serious illness. For the few Americans that insist on throwing out the same old (lobbyist) talking points please read her carefully.
Well, I'm from Texas also and I was in the hospital last summer in Arlington for four days and my bill was $127,000. When they found out I had no insurance of any kind, they reduced it to $7,000. That apparently was the "poverty" line. So this tells me that all medical bills are way overly padded to start with everywhere.
The hospitals charge whatever the traffic will bear. A friend of mine had an experience similar to yours except he was charged $250,000. He didn't have insurance but he did own a title company in a small West Texas town. For several months they wouldn't bargain with him. When they realized he couldn't come up with the full amount in cash, they began to bargain and finally settled for $50,000 many months later. He was lucky. They could have sued him for the full amount and bankrupted him.
This is not a system I want to live under, where a hospital can charge whatever it wants and threaten to take everything a person has. Sounds like you don't have much to lose, Donna, but a lot of people do.
One other major thing the president may learn is that when you don't launch imperialistic wars all over the world you save a lot of money. Canada is able to do a lot more for its people than the US can because it doesn't waste billions of dollars on war.
They also spend very little on the military period. The U.S. needs a strong military. If we had Canada'smilitary would be be able to hold off Cuba and Venezyuels and their allies if they attacked us. Do not worry. The troops will be home soon and the military will be downsized considerably
Cuba and Venezuela attack us, with what rowboats and the rumba? You are either joking or you live in Bush country. We are Venezuela's biggest trading partner.
We need the troops in Afghanistan to protect our border with Mexico because they are ready to implode. When that happens we will need a Berlin type wall to keep them out.
"The U.S. needs a strong military."
We don't need 700 military bases in 130 foreign countries. That costs us a trillion dollars a year. I would rather have universal health care.
The U.S. spends a trillion dollars a year maintaining over 700 military bases in 130 foreign countries. I would rather have universal health care.
HuffPost's Pick
A PBS "Frontline" documentary that studied the healthcare systems of several countries: I think they were Britain, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and Switzerland.
All differed in their mix of public and private elements. Some included insurance companies (non-profit.) Several had all privately run hospitals and doctor's practices. Some had a "gatekeeper" system for seeing specialists, as here, some did not. Some paid from general tax revenue, some mandated people to buy policies, with the government picking up the tab for those too poor to afford them. Most had preset charges that any medical facility was allowed to make for services.
Because they removed the profit concept, and had efficient administrative systems unlike our bloated insurance bureaucracies, they could provide quality care at a lower percent of GDP and with far lower administrative overhead. They also got better deals on drug purchases, because the whole nation was one customer. But above all:
- Every single resident, often even visitors, was fully covered.
- Some had small co-pays: in some,a citizen never saw a bill in his/her lifetime.
- The concept of someone going bankrupt from medical costs was inconceivable, everywhere. In the US , 50% of personal bankruptcies over the years have been due to medical bills - often for people "covered" in the inadequate US sense. (May be shifting slightly now with our economic meltdown, but the point remains).
It is time to take a serious look. I urge people to get hold of the DVD from PBS.
Just what is a non-profit. Does that mean the extra cash goes to salaries of the biggest fundraisers or is everyone just happy to contribute and what little extra money is used to send doctors around the world to keep current and some research
It's non-profit the same way the police, the fire department and the military is non-profit. In most of the developed world health care, falls within that group of services where it doesn't matter what your income is. It has nothing to do with it. Where as in the USA medical care is not a service, it's a business like Walmart, Denny's and Nike.
Here it is in chart form...
Non-Profit Services...
Police
Courts
Fire Departments
Military
Roads and Highways
Canadian Health Insurance
For-Profit Businesses...
Walmart
Hollywood
Airlines
Kentucky Fried Chicken
American Health Insurance
If canadian banks are so great why is President Obama considering the Swiss model of banking?
Listen to NPR Planet Money Podcasts for the answer.
The swiss had a financial meltdown years ago and the gov't had to nationalize 2 of the major banks. Not all the banks, only a few.
They fired the management, restructured, and moved forward. The swiss admit it wasn't perfect but like the US situation being 10 steps behind, having a slow moving gov't process is a receipe for disaster. Proactive is much better than reactive.
Regardless, any information, help and advice from others who have suffered bank meltdowns can only help all americans.
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