Hacker News Reader

Comment by dafty4 | Hacker News Reader

Terrible article. Canadians live 2 years longer on average than Americans. And you're telling me the US mental health system would have been more pro-active? Come on.

"Hers was Sault Ste. Marie’s sole homicide of 2013."

How many small towns in the US can you say that of?

View on HN

Classic case of whataboutism. I didn't see anything discussing the quality of the US mental health system. It's a Canadian website discussing a Canadian case. It failed here and the author of the article is trying to point out where it failed. This is an attempt to prod the system to improve.

Definitely agree. I saw virtually no comparison to what the US does / would do nor how America handles similar cases, etc. America was mentioned zero times in the article (0) and United States was mentioned twice in the article (2) and that was only to mention background information about the victim and her family, nothing to do with health care, mental illness, violence, or anything else to do with the editorial.

But then again look at the title "How Canada's..." implying this was something peculiar to Canada in contrast to other health care systems. Any discussion of Canada's health care system is going to invite comparison to others isn't it?

"How many small towns in the US can you say that of?" Most of them. I'm not denying Canada's is lower (about a third of the US homicide rate) but most small towns in the US can go years without any homicides.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com