"... and the bad guys don't act like they do on Burn Notice."
Um.... actually, if they are "the authorities", the often do.
Seriously: haven't you read all those stories about government harassment, FBI agents getting caught putting tracers on cars, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.... ??
DEA having to toss out a case against a drug smuggler because they didn't have a couple of $100 hard drives to put all the data on?
I mean, come on. It's like watching the Keystone Kops from the silent film era, but every day.
"If you're awarded a contract to perform certain tasks for Google, then you are a contractor. Whether or not they have to explain the job to you isn't really relevant."
Wrong. First, the COMPANY that was awarded the contract is the contractor, not the person working for them. That person, if they are working as a temporary employee, is a TEMP, not a "contractor". I'm not nitpicking, there is a big difference.
"Whether or not they have to explain the job to you isn't really relevant."
Again wrong. It's of the utmost relevance. Did you read the IRS documents I linked to? (I doubt it. But there is all kinds of information about this on Google, too.)
How do you tell a "temporary employee" from a "contractor"? If that person is working in the capacity of a regular employee (i.e., they keep regular employee hours, they follow regular employee rules, maybe they were given an "employee manual" or "procedural handbook" by the company) then they are temporary employees. This is by IRS regulations, man, I'm not making it up. Something like an employee manual, or detailed instructions on how to do the job, is a dead giveaway.
"Since the contractor is either self employed or part of another company (not google), it's not Google whose responsible for working hours, resources required, training required, and such and such."
That's the major part of my point, man, and you're making it for me. According to all the reports, "contractors" who are on that 1-year contract with Google ARE told when to work, how to work, how much they will be paid. By Google. That makes them temporary employees, NOT "contractors".
A contractor is hired to do a job he/she already knows how to do. That's what makes them contractors, as opposed to just hired help. For example, you might hire a contractor to write code for you or build you a web page. You don't teach them how to do it, and you don't give them an "employee manual". They are presumed to already know how to do those things. That's largely what makes them a contractor.
Again... I'm not making that stuff up, that's how the IRS decides who is an employee and who is a contractor.
"If he had no idea what the job was, well, then he's just a poor contractor, cause signing a contract for delivering something without knowing exactly what it is is just dumb."
Again, you are making my point for me. Thanks. And again: by all accounts, Google's "contractors", for the most part, aren't contractors at all but temporary employees.
Now, I don't know about California, but in MY state, you can't be a "temporary employee" for a year. It's illegal. They can try you out for a specified time (I think the legal limit is 90 days), but then they have to either hire you as a regular employee, and give you employee benefits, or break off the relationship.
THAT'S why I am saying: these people aren't "contractors". And if California laws are anything at all like here, they aren't "temps" either. So what are they?
""contractors" in a corporate context don't usually mean 1099 contractors but employees of another firm that you have a contract with."
Nonsense. If you have a contract with a temp agency, those are temps, not contractors. They are not at all "generally" called contractors, they are called temps. There is a difference, not just in the wording, but in the law. Temps are temps, employees are employees, and contractors are contractors.
If you (and they) want to use the word improperly, that's your choice. But don't try to tell me it's right, because it's not.
If you're "rationally paranoid" at all, you don't keep most of your money in the bank anymore anyway. And why should you? It doesn't earn enough interest to be worth it.
"Name one bug free software system that does more than render 'Hello World!'."
That's completely beside the point. The issue here is that there are very OBVIOUS flaws that should never have been there, and they don't plan to fix them anytime soon.
"So do you want to take bets on the likelihood of roundup resistant weeds in the next decade?"
As I ALREADY explained in one of my posts, Roundup-resistant "weeds" are not even remotely the same things as Roundup-resistant corn. Expecting a particular mutation to occur through natural selection SOMEWHERE may be reasonable, but to expect a particular mutation to occur in a particular organism probably isn't.
I would not take the bet, for 2 reasons: (1) roundup-resistant weeds have been around for a long time, and (2) that is completely irrelevant to the point I was making.
"Back in the 80s, he worked 10 hours a day, saw 40-50 patents a day and made more than $250k a year. Now, he works 10-12 hours a day and the made less than $40k."
I very strongly suspect that "Obamacare", if not repealed or nullified (some states have already done that), will not make that situation any better.
A temp employee is not a "contractor", no matter whether the company is "contracting" with a temp agency. That's simply improper use of the word. They just aren't the same things, at all.
"Speaking as someone who used to contract a lot you don't have any "personal control" over any of those factors. Instead you negotiate a competitive rate, hours that work for both sides, and working conditions, but at every point your compromising with the customer to make something work. Sure you can walk away if you don't like the terms, and the same for this guy."
I wrote "in general". And in general, yes you do. Those are some of the primary criteria by which the IRS determines whether you are a contractor or an employee. You may "negotiate" those things with a customer. But you can't negotiate without having a say in the matter. That's still not the same as being an employee, in which the company can unilaterally dictate all of those things.
A real giveaway, in many cases, is the "employee handbook". With very few exceptions, if you have to follow a "manual" or "procedural handbook" or the like that comes from the company, you are an employee. No two ways about it.
""Contractor" is used in the article (and at Google and many other tech companies) in a generic sense, and is not the same thing as "independent contractor" for tax purposes. For example, if Google contracts with a temporary staffing agency of some sort for additional help with whatever, that person is an employee of the staffing agency, but is working at Google under a contract (made with the staffing agency) and thus is a "contractor" as far as Google is concerned."
Google's misuse of the word is not my responsibility. If they call them contractors, I have no choice but to presume they meant contractors.
The last Myst game I bought was very frustrating... the DRM insisted that I insert the install CD every time I played it, which made it difficult to play when I was not at home (it was on a laptop).
I called Cyan to complain. The person on the phone seemed very sympathetic. He said, "Yes, I understand perfectly, and my colleagues and I agree with you... but that was done by the publisher and we have no control over it." The publisher of course being Ubisoft.
What's wrong with it is that it is illegal, and cheats people out of employee benefits the law says they should be receiving.
"Technically all contractors are kind of temporary employees are they not?"
No, they are NOT. As I have ALREADY explained, there are concrete differences between being and employee and being a contractor.
"The client who over pays uses them for temporary projects and they get to find out who si a good worker."
By all accounts I have read, they are anything but "overpaid" at Google. So-called "contractors" are underpaid, receive no benefits, and are treated like garbage.
"If you got fired and screwed over with references it is a great way to prove yourself and the client typically overpays anyway for this priveldge so no hard feelings either way."
You can do that just as easily with something like an internship or temporary hire, or even working for a temp agency. There is no reason for a company to call a temporary employee a "contractor" unless they are cheating somebody. Being a contractor is a DIFFERENT KIND of job. The requirements are different, the demands are different, the taxes are different.
"I was wondering the same thing. Aren't there rules regarding employer responsibility? Surely such rules would apply to contractors as well."
It's not a cut-and-dried situation, but from what I have read, it looks to me like Google is pretty clearly over the line here.
Generally speaking, if you're a contractor, you have personal control over at least one, but probably all three, of the following things:
(1) What you charge for your work.
(2) The hours that you work.
(3) How you do your job. If you are a "contractor", you are presumed to already know how to do your job. If the company has to tell you how to do it, you're not a contractor, you're an employee.
Was this guy an "obscenity" expert before he was hired? Probably not. Google probably sat him down and said, "This is what you do, this is how you deal with violations, these are the hours you must do it in, and this is how much we pay.
Even if it's only for a year, that's not a "contractor". That's an employee. I think Google is really screwing up here, and they are bound to get caught at it.
It is appearing to me more and more, as I learn about the "tagging" practices and stories like this, as though Google is illegally employing people as "contractors" when they are really just low-level employees.
This has been a long-time problem with large corporations. IBM was famously caught at doing that, and so was Microsoft.
The IRS has pretty clear guidelines about who is a "contractor" versus who is an "employee".
It appears pretty clear to me that Google is illegally calling employees "contractors" so they can be denied perks and benefits. Just like IBM was, and just like Microsoft was.
"They have a strange notion of 'equality' that includes 'holding current men responsible for what their distant ancestors may have done, and punishing them for it with double standards'."
I say the same about "affirmative action" programs. I fail to see how institutionalizing discrimination can eliminate discrimination. Irony is especially in the California ruling that a white male (which is now a minority in California) was not eligible for affirmative action benefits, because the white male minority "was not historically subjected to discriminatory practices".
Um... wait. Does that mean that affirmative action programs were specifically set up so that we can pay for "the sins of the fathers"? I thought that the concepts of bills of attainder and corruption of blood were prohibited by the Constitution.
"That's the problem with all of the "social justice" forms of thought. They make no sense when scrutinized. They are about locating the perceived strong and taking them down a peg or two. They are never about locating the perceived weak and teaching them to be stronger. The result is that everyone's standard is lowered and there is nothing to aspire to, just spite and other emotion."
Well stated.
* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
-- Rev. William John Henry Boetcker (often mis-attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
However, doing these things are all typical Democratic Party values. (Not that I like the Republican Party much either.)
"Build a man a fire and he stays warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he stays warm for the rest of his life." -- Unknown
"I consider you an emotional ranter because you were, in fact, ranting emotionally, in all caps, and swearing."
I used all-caps to emphasize things that other people did not get after I had explained multiple times (this is NOT the only sub-thread in which I have been posting and I'm not about to repeat everything every time in every sub-thread).
Granted, some people don't read the whole thread (and I suspect you have been one of them), but I don't generally use caps or swear unless someone is being unusually obtuse.
"I don't consider i-sis to be a reliable source."
And you don't follow instructions. I instructed people to follow the LINKS from the articles to find source references. I wasn't relying on the articles themselves as primary sources.
"Also, in general I don't consider courts to be arbiters of truth and science."
Neither do I. And neither do the courts. That's why they call in experts. Nevertheless, the publicly available evidence in that case is pretty damning.
All in all, yes, I include you in with the unusually obtuse readers. You didn't follow the links at first, THEN called me names for "lack of evidence", then did read the articles but did not follow the instructions to get the actual references, and came back and called me names again. Further, you have shown no evidence or even hint that you have even bothered to spend a couple of minutes look up any of the subjects on your own.
"Good god, doesn't anyone know how to do a little reading on subjects before giving their lectures?"
And the same back at ya.
Insurance companies are INDIRECTLY responsible for a lot more of the cost than you are reporting. For example, without our insurance "system", prescription drugs would cost a fraction of what they do today. No, that's not a direct cost of insurance that shows on the books, but yes, it is very definitely due to our insurance coverage system.
There are about a thousand other indirect ways that insurance companies drive up costs.
"Canada and Mexico healthcare is basically "free" so demand is high, while supply is limited. Naturally standard of care goes down in order to increase supply. It's also why you get waiting lists and all that."
That's an oversimplification. Take the case of Canada for example. It's not just a quantity problem but one of quality as well.
First, there's the pay problem. A (formerly) Canadian doctor explained it to me: you get paid about the same whether you are a good doctor or a bad doctor, and there is much less spread in income for the different specialties than in the United States. According to him, motivation to be a good doctor, especially in a difficult specialty, is low. Quality of care suffers as a result.
He really hated the Canadian system, which is why he now lives and practices here.
But the quantity problem is also real. As a resident of a city that is a medical service hub for hundreds of thousands of square miles, including a decent chunk of Canada: you'd be surprised at how many Canadians will drive 800-1000 miles to get good medical care in the U.S., even though it's "free" where they come from.
As you say: free or not, it doesn't matter much if you can't get it.
Like I wrote earlier: look at the links I already posted here, or go find some yourself. There are not hard to find.
I am amused by people like you who refuse to look at actual evidence, then stick your nose up in the air and call other people "ranters" and "conspiracy theorists". (Since you did call me a "ranter" and "overly emotional", but you haven't even bothered to read the links I pointed you to, I have to assume that you ALREADY include me among the latter.
If I didn't think your hypocrisy were so amusing, I'd tell you to fuck off.
Slashdot Mirror
"... and the bad guys don't act like they do on Burn Notice."
Um.... actually, if they are "the authorities", the often do.
... ??
Seriously: haven't you read all those stories about government harassment, FBI agents getting caught putting tracers on cars, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
DEA having to toss out a case against a drug smuggler because they didn't have a couple of $100 hard drives to put all the data on?
I mean, come on. It's like watching the Keystone Kops from the silent film era, but every day.
"If you're awarded a contract to perform certain tasks for Google, then you are a contractor. Whether or not they have to explain the job to you isn't really relevant."
Wrong. First, the COMPANY that was awarded the contract is the contractor, not the person working for them. That person, if they are working as a temporary employee, is a TEMP, not a "contractor". I'm not nitpicking, there is a big difference.
"Whether or not they have to explain the job to you isn't really relevant."
Again wrong. It's of the utmost relevance. Did you read the IRS documents I linked to? (I doubt it. But there is all kinds of information about this on Google, too.)
How do you tell a "temporary employee" from a "contractor"? If that person is working in the capacity of a regular employee (i.e., they keep regular employee hours, they follow regular employee rules, maybe they were given an "employee manual" or "procedural handbook" by the company) then they are temporary employees. This is by IRS regulations, man, I'm not making it up. Something like an employee manual, or detailed instructions on how to do the job, is a dead giveaway.
"Since the contractor is either self employed or part of another company (not google), it's not Google whose responsible for working hours, resources required, training required, and such and such."
That's the major part of my point, man, and you're making it for me. According to all the reports, "contractors" who are on that 1-year contract with Google ARE told when to work, how to work, how much they will be paid. By Google. That makes them temporary employees, NOT "contractors".
A contractor is hired to do a job he/she already knows how to do. That's what makes them contractors, as opposed to just hired help. For example, you might hire a contractor to write code for you or build you a web page. You don't teach them how to do it, and you don't give them an "employee manual". They are presumed to already know how to do those things. That's largely what makes them a contractor.
Again... I'm not making that stuff up, that's how the IRS decides who is an employee and who is a contractor.
"If he had no idea what the job was, well, then he's just a poor contractor, cause signing a contract for delivering something without knowing exactly what it is is just dumb."
Again, you are making my point for me. Thanks. And again: by all accounts, Google's "contractors", for the most part, aren't contractors at all but temporary employees.
Now, I don't know about California, but in MY state, you can't be a "temporary employee" for a year. It's illegal. They can try you out for a specified time (I think the legal limit is 90 days), but then they have to either hire you as a regular employee, and give you employee benefits, or break off the relationship.
THAT'S why I am saying: these people aren't "contractors". And if California laws are anything at all like here, they aren't "temps" either. So what are they?
They're employees, being cheated out of benefits.
""contractors" in a corporate context don't usually mean 1099 contractors but employees of another firm that you have a contract with."
Nonsense. If you have a contract with a temp agency, those are temps, not contractors. They are not at all "generally" called contractors, they are called temps. There is a difference, not just in the wording, but in the law. Temps are temps, employees are employees, and contractors are contractors.
If you (and they) want to use the word improperly, that's your choice. But don't try to tell me it's right, because it's not.
This was a more recent version, Myst III or IV, I don't remember. But it was pretty new, 5 years ago, maybe 6.
Also, I'm not sure I had any imaging tools for Windows at the time. Of course I haven't been on Windows anymore since about then, either.
"Welcome to every watch list, ever."
Kind of along that line:
If you're "rationally paranoid" at all, you don't keep most of your money in the bank anymore anyway. And why should you? It doesn't earn enough interest to be worth it.
"Name one bug free software system that does more than render 'Hello World!'."
That's completely beside the point. The issue here is that there are very OBVIOUS flaws that should never have been there, and they don't plan to fix them anytime soon.
"Rushing out the latest bug fixes is a terrible model for software that puts life at risk."
Not if you have adequate code tests in place. But of course, if you did, you probably wouldn't have the bugs in the first place...
I think their real concern was that it be Accredified.
"So do you want to take bets on the likelihood of roundup resistant weeds in the next decade?"
As I ALREADY explained in one of my posts, Roundup-resistant "weeds" are not even remotely the same things as Roundup-resistant corn. Expecting a particular mutation to occur through natural selection SOMEWHERE may be reasonable, but to expect a particular mutation to occur in a particular organism probably isn't.
I would not take the bet, for 2 reasons: (1) roundup-resistant weeds have been around for a long time, and (2) that is completely irrelevant to the point I was making.
I am done with this "conversation".
"Back in the 80s, he worked 10 hours a day, saw 40-50 patents a day and made more than $250k a year. Now, he works 10-12 hours a day and the made less than $40k."
I very strongly suspect that "Obamacare", if not repealed or nullified (some states have already done that), will not make that situation any better.
A temp employee is not a "contractor", no matter whether the company is "contracting" with a temp agency. That's simply improper use of the word. They just aren't the same things, at all.
"Speaking as someone who used to contract a lot you don't have any "personal control" over any of those factors. Instead you negotiate a competitive rate, hours that work for both sides, and working conditions, but at every point your compromising with the customer to make something work. Sure you can walk away if you don't like the terms, and the same for this guy."
I wrote "in general". And in general, yes you do. Those are some of the primary criteria by which the IRS determines whether you are a contractor or an employee. You may "negotiate" those things with a customer. But you can't negotiate without having a say in the matter. That's still not the same as being an employee, in which the company can unilaterally dictate all of those things.
A real giveaway, in many cases, is the "employee handbook". With very few exceptions, if you have to follow a "manual" or "procedural handbook" or the like that comes from the company, you are an employee. No two ways about it.
""Contractor" is used in the article (and at Google and many other tech companies) in a generic sense, and is not the same thing as "independent contractor" for tax purposes. For example, if Google contracts with a temporary staffing agency of some sort for additional help with whatever, that person is an employee of the staffing agency, but is working at Google under a contract (made with the staffing agency) and thus is a "contractor" as far as Google is concerned."
Google's misuse of the word is not my responsibility. If they call them contractors, I have no choice but to presume they meant contractors.
"The vulnerability with proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code was publicly presented by security researcher Justin W. Clarke of Cylance Inc."
I strongly suspect that the claims are valid.
The last Myst game I bought was very frustrating... the DRM insisted that I insert the install CD every time I played it, which made it difficult to play when I was not at home (it was on a laptop).
I called Cyan to complain. The person on the phone seemed very sympathetic. He said, "Yes, I understand perfectly, and my colleagues and I agree with you... but that was done by the publisher and we have no control over it." The publisher of course being Ubisoft.
"What is wrong with that?"
What's wrong with it is that it is illegal, and cheats people out of employee benefits the law says they should be receiving.
"Technically all contractors are kind of temporary employees are they not?"
No, they are NOT. As I have ALREADY explained, there are concrete differences between being and employee and being a contractor.
"The client who over pays uses them for temporary projects and they get to find out who si a good worker."
By all accounts I have read, they are anything but "overpaid" at Google. So-called "contractors" are underpaid, receive no benefits, and are treated like garbage.
"If you got fired and screwed over with references it is a great way to prove yourself and the client typically overpays anyway for this priveldge so no hard feelings either way."
You can do that just as easily with something like an internship or temporary hire, or even working for a temp agency. There is no reason for a company to call a temporary employee a "contractor" unless they are cheating somebody. Being a contractor is a DIFFERENT KIND of job. The requirements are different, the demands are different, the taxes are different.
"I was wondering the same thing. Aren't there rules regarding employer responsibility? Surely such rules would apply to contractors as well."
It's not a cut-and-dried situation, but from what I have read, it looks to me like Google is pretty clearly over the line here.
Generally speaking, if you're a contractor, you have personal control over at least one, but probably all three, of the following things:
(1) What you charge for your work.
(2) The hours that you work.
(3) How you do your job. If you are a "contractor", you are presumed to already know how to do your job. If the company has to tell you how to do it, you're not a contractor, you're an employee.
Was this guy an "obscenity" expert before he was hired? Probably not. Google probably sat him down and said, "This is what you do, this is how you deal with violations, these are the hours you must do it in, and this is how much we pay.
Even if it's only for a year, that's not a "contractor". That's an employee. I think Google is really screwing up here, and they are bound to get caught at it.
Also, here is an IRS training guide [pdf] that explains in great detail the differences between employees and contractors.
Damn. That link got lost somehow.
Here is the IRS link that was supposed to be included above.
It is appearing to me more and more, as I learn about the "tagging" practices and stories like this, as though Google is illegally employing people as "contractors" when they are really just low-level employees.
This has been a long-time problem with large corporations. IBM was famously caught at doing that, and so was Microsoft.
The IRS has pretty clear guidelines about who is a "contractor" versus who is an "employee".
It appears pretty clear to me that Google is illegally calling employees "contractors" so they can be denied perks and benefits. Just like IBM was, and just like Microsoft was.
"They have a strange notion of 'equality' that includes 'holding current men responsible for what their distant ancestors may have done, and punishing them for it with double standards'."
I say the same about "affirmative action" programs. I fail to see how institutionalizing discrimination can eliminate discrimination. Irony is especially in the California ruling that a white male (which is now a minority in California) was not eligible for affirmative action benefits, because the white male minority "was not historically subjected to discriminatory practices".
Um... wait. Does that mean that affirmative action programs were specifically set up so that we can pay for "the sins of the fathers"? I thought that the concepts of bills of attainder and corruption of blood were prohibited by the Constitution.
"That's the problem with all of the "social justice" forms of thought. They make no sense when scrutinized. They are about locating the perceived strong and taking them down a peg or two. They are never about locating the perceived weak and teaching them to be stronger. The result is that everyone's standard is lowered and there is nothing to aspire to, just spite and other emotion."
Well stated.
* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
-- Rev. William John Henry Boetcker (often mis-attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
However, doing these things are all typical Democratic Party values. (Not that I like the Republican Party much either.)
"Build a man a fire and he stays warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he stays warm for the rest of his life." -- Unknown
"I consider you an emotional ranter because you were, in fact, ranting emotionally, in all caps, and swearing."
I used all-caps to emphasize things that other people did not get after I had explained multiple times (this is NOT the only sub-thread in which I have been posting and I'm not about to repeat everything every time in every sub-thread).
Granted, some people don't read the whole thread (and I suspect you have been one of them), but I don't generally use caps or swear unless someone is being unusually obtuse.
"I don't consider i-sis to be a reliable source."
And you don't follow instructions. I instructed people to follow the LINKS from the articles to find source references. I wasn't relying on the articles themselves as primary sources.
"Also, in general I don't consider courts to be arbiters of truth and science."
Neither do I. And neither do the courts. That's why they call in experts. Nevertheless, the publicly available evidence in that case is pretty damning.
All in all, yes, I include you in with the unusually obtuse readers. You didn't follow the links at first, THEN called me names for "lack of evidence", then did read the articles but did not follow the instructions to get the actual references, and came back and called me names again. Further, you have shown no evidence or even hint that you have even bothered to spend a couple of minutes look up any of the subjects on your own.
Then you expect me to be polite to you?
Haha. Not bloody likely.
"Good god, doesn't anyone know how to do a little reading on subjects before giving their lectures?"
And the same back at ya.
Insurance companies are INDIRECTLY responsible for a lot more of the cost than you are reporting. For example, without our insurance "system", prescription drugs would cost a fraction of what they do today. No, that's not a direct cost of insurance that shows on the books, but yes, it is very definitely due to our insurance coverage system.
There are about a thousand other indirect ways that insurance companies drive up costs.
"Canada and Mexico healthcare is basically "free" so demand is high, while supply is limited. Naturally standard of care goes down in order to increase supply. It's also why you get waiting lists and all that."
That's an oversimplification. Take the case of Canada for example. It's not just a quantity problem but one of quality as well.
First, there's the pay problem. A (formerly) Canadian doctor explained it to me: you get paid about the same whether you are a good doctor or a bad doctor, and there is much less spread in income for the different specialties than in the United States. According to him, motivation to be a good doctor, especially in a difficult specialty, is low. Quality of care suffers as a result.
He really hated the Canadian system, which is why he now lives and practices here.
But the quantity problem is also real. As a resident of a city that is a medical service hub for hundreds of thousands of square miles, including a decent chunk of Canada: you'd be surprised at how many Canadians will drive 800-1000 miles to get good medical care in the U.S., even though it's "free" where they come from.
As you say: free or not, it doesn't matter much if you can't get it.
Like I wrote earlier: look at the links I already posted here, or go find some yourself. There are not hard to find.
I am amused by people like you who refuse to look at actual evidence, then stick your nose up in the air and call other people "ranters" and "conspiracy theorists". (Since you did call me a "ranter" and "overly emotional", but you haven't even bothered to read the links I pointed you to, I have to assume that you ALREADY include me among the latter.
If I didn't think your hypocrisy were so amusing, I'd tell you to fuck off.