My lecture was on health care reform, and I asked the control room technician to please run through the DVD cues with me prior to the audience assembling. As we screened the different exhibits, all of which had to do with the debate underway in Congress, Joseph volunteered that he was from Ontario, and that the wait for a standard physical was 4 to 6 months.

As a young and healthy man, he didn’t have any particular complaints about Canada’s government-run, government-paid-for system, but he knew that you didn’t want to be seriously ill up north. And you never wanted to be in a hurry.