Happy 250th Birthday, America!
Thank you for being the best neighbor a country could ask for.
Let me tell you a little about myself. I am Canadian. Sorry, eh? I have lived within a couple of hours of the US Border my entire life. My grandfather fought in World War 2 alongside Americans. I’ve done business in America. 90% of my readers are American. I have friends and family there.
Our two countries have had one of the strongest relationships any two nations have ever shared in the history of the world.
And the world loves to dunk on you. They blame you for everything wrong on the planet. They tell you you're backwards, behind the times, in need of catching up.
Well, America. It’s not you who is backwards. It’s us. We all live in your shadow, and we are better off for it.
The rest of the world won’t say it, but I will, because it’s plainly true for those who have eyes to see.
You carry the world on your shoulders in a hundred ways, and here's one nobody will admit.
Health Care.
That’s right. You’ve probably heard it all, if you’ve spent any time online. There’s been award winning Hollywood movies about it, even. Remember Michael Moore’s “Sicko”? He actually tried to convince people that Cuba’s health care system was morally superior to America’s.
I’m not kidding. This isn’t hyperbole. And you know what? He convinced a lot of people. He even convinced a much younger version of me… for a while.
But believe it or not, the morbidly obese communist in a baseball cap wasn’t telling you the whole truth. Neither are the people of the world who’ve bought into the kind of propaganda he’s selling.
You want to know the truth about America’s contribution to health care?
America has won more Nobel Prizes in Medicine than any nation on earth. There isn’t a close second.
America invents more than half of all the new medicine on earth. More than every other country on the planet combined. The drug that saves your Canadian life, the treatment that saves your European kid… odds are it was born in an American lab.
Americans are a tiny slice of the world's patients, but they foot roughly half the world's medicine bill. Every "free" system, including Cuba's, including Europe’s… including mine, is riding on it.
They like to say things like “America is the only developed country without universal health care”, when the truth is, America is the one pulling above its weight and subsidizing revolutionary health care products and services for the entire world.
America’s health care system has its faults, and is far from perfect… but it is the most compassionate and innovative health care system in the history of this planet, and that’s not a bad start.
God Bless You America. Here’s to 250 more years of excellence.
~ Clay
p.s. If what I wrote moved you, leave a message on my wall and let me know stopbeingprey.com/wall
p.p.s. I put this email out as a post on my Facebook page tonight; if you'd like to share it here's the link.