How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work
A Canadian MD explains how socialized medicine doesn't work:
I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.
My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.
Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.
I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.
America is right to seek a model for delivering good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to Canada, but close to home — in the other four-fifths or so of our economy. From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up. Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.
Read more here from the IBD.....
8 Comments:
From a lawyer in Michigan:
You must be desperate. This is a very OLD circulated piece from a group on a rampage. The PEOPLE of Canada have VOTED ( most recently in Ontario) and support the candidates favoring the Canadian system and opposing the candidates spewing your position for change. It is now clear to me that you get talking points apparently daily from your group of Reed, Geo. Mason folks etc. who tell you what to write and feed you the garbage that you use. No thinking, no research just distribute the propaganda. I have lawyer friends in Toronto with lots of money who praise Canadian health care system and use it. They could afford to go to U.S. for care and PAY but are satisfied with their system. They are satisfied to pay taxes so that all can have health care and their is no private system so the rich can't legally pay for different care. Same care for all. I have a friend in Manchester, England. Diagnosed (by MRI) with need for non emergency arthroscopic knee surgery on Monday and had the surgery on Thursday. Can't get it that quickly in most of U. S. and forget it if you have no insurance and modest income. PLEASE don't expose your students to this junk. Save it for zealot cocktail parties.
'lawyer in Michigan' deseperately seeking validation for his/her socialist views?!?!
"I have lawyer friends in Toronto with lots of money who praise Canadian health care system and use it"...
Yeah, sure you do...
"Diagnosed (by MRI) with need for non emergency arthroscopic knee surgery on Monday and had the surgery on Thursday"...
Maybe medical situation is slovenly in Michigan but here in the St. Louis area I had that done in one day...
MRI in the morning, the minor knee surgery later that day back in '98...
What's the big deal unless Michigan doctors are afraid of ambulance chasers?
Ya know, I think the only good thing that could come out of socialized medicine is this: if doctors worked for the government, lawyers couldn't sue them; just as you can't sue the government.
Now that would be justice.
When a patient on a stretcher in an L.A. hospital dies, it's because of the virus...when a patient on a stretcher in a Montreal hospital dies, it because of "socialized medicine". That's a given, everybody knows that.
The reason there are no wait times in the US is because the 41 million uninsured cannot afford to seek medical care and are therefore obviously not part of the equation....Leaves more for the rest of us. What's wrong with those guys anyway, being born poor, don't they know any better?
So a government monopoly is the answer to all our problems.
Geez, utopia is just over the next horizon.
"The reason there are no wait times in the US is because the 41 million uninsured cannot afford to seek medical care and are therefore obviously not part of the equation"...
Well there mr. compassionate_A, here's your chance to step up and buy all those people you claim don't have medical health insurance and get them covered...
Then since you are NOT considering the possible results of your actions (as your silly and factless comment showed) we can now have hospital emergency rooms and receiving rooms full to overflowing with supposedly sick people...LOL!
BTW this is hardly the first attempt by liberals & politicos to foist of socialized medicine onto the population...
Consider listening to Ronald Reagan who made some public comments back in '61: Ronald Reagan Speaks out against Socialized Medicine
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I have volunteered in a large Vancouver, Canada hospital emergency department and have never seen anyone wait days and I have never seen or heard of a sweat and urine soaked waiting room. Either Mr.DAVID GRATZER is lying or his anecdote is an extreme anomaly because even Canadians won't put up with standards of care like that.
In Canada, my mother was diagnosed with cancer on a Wednesday. At 4:00 pm on that same day she was told to come back to the hospital at 7:00 am the next morning for a six week course of in patient treatment that included an operation and radiation. Treatment that was successful by the way.
I have never known of a real person or directly talked with anyone that has a horror story of waiting for necessary health care in Canada.
Perhaps the thing that speaks most favourably for national health care is that Canada being roughly 1/10th the population of the U.S. does not have 4 million or so people that are without health care. Every Canadian citizen has health care with no deductible and we get to chose the Dr. we want.
If we need knee replacement surgery, a heart transplant or a wart removed our deductible is always zero.
Yes Canadian federal income taxes are higher but that seems to be somewhat or completely offset by the disparity in all the other taxes in both countries. The result being that if you are a wage or salary earner in either country your spending ability after taxes is going to be roughly the same.
Look at property taxes in San Jose, California as an example where buying a home for a million dollars results in property taxes around U.S.$12,000 per year or U.S.$1,000 per month. A property purchased in Vancouver for about a million dollars will pay CAD. $4,200 per year in property taxes or about CAD.$350 per month and that includes school, sewer, water, recycling and etc. as well.
One of the problems with our U.S. system is that the person earning $8.00 per hour can't afford health care insurance. Some people say they should get an education and get a better paying job so they can pay for health insurance. My only question is that how is the person that replaces them going to pay for health care insurance on $8.00 per hour?
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