Humour – Canadians Last Means of Dealing with the Realities of the Canadian Medical System
With all the current emphasis on providing basic if not socialized medicine and medical care to the residents of the United States it is always interesting to look at the basic social mores of other groups that have adopted this way of life – this means of providing medical care.
The line in the former Soviet Union was that “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” During Stalinist times of the Soviet Union the one ( if not only ) safe means of providing criticism of current economic or social conditions or of providing a comment on the current situation that the citizens were living with and through was through humour – the telling of a joke . It was considered safe tradition. Nothing new here. The basis of most fairy tales are based in political or situational humor – to make light of something very serious and dark. The tale of “Humpty Dumpty . sat on a wall, Humpty had a great fall”- was a description of the Royalty at the time – “Off with your head could be the edict in a flash”. “Ring around the Rosie … A pocket full of poesy – Hush they all fall down” relates tales of the “Black Plague” which caused untold numbers of death and disease in the dark ages.
In the same way Canadians with their health care systems , find that their only recourse to poor service levels with corresponding staggering growth of bureaucracies and their infrastructures and systems find that their only recourse seems to be the telling of jokes and humor related to the current state of the Canadian
“Health Care System” and Systems.
Medical economist M. Labovitch pointedly notes that the butt of the anger is safely directed at doctors rather than taking a risk to the health care of the teller of the tale and their families.
Bureaucrats it seems , while putting in their full days , compiling reports and printing graphs and charts on the high end colour laser printer , have little sense of humour and the telling of jokes:
Five Canadian Surgeons are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.
The first, an Ontario surgeon says, ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’
The second, a Quebec surgeon responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is colour coded.’
The third a B.C. surgeon says, ‘No, I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’
The fourth, an Alberta surgeon chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction workers…those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.
But the fifth, a Newfoundland surgeon shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable.
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