"Free" Health Care

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
"Free" Health Care
186
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 8:58am
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20040721.shtml

Free health care

Walter E. Williams

July 21, 2004


Let's start out by not quibbling with America's socialists' false claim that health-care service is a human right that people should have regardless of whether they can pay for it or not and that it should be free. Before we buy into this socialist agenda, we might check out just what happens when health-care services are "free." Let's look at our neighbor to the north -- Canada.

The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver, B.C.-based think tank, has done yeoman's work keeping track of Canada's socialized health-care system. It has just come out with its 13th annual waiting-list survey. It shows that the average time a patient waited between referral from a general practitioner to treatment rose from 16.5 weeks in 2001-02 to 17.7 weeks in 2003. Saskatchewan had the longest average waiting time of nearly 30 weeks, while Ontario had the shortest, 14 weeks.

Waiting lists also exist for diagnostic procedures such as computer tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. Depending on what province and the particular diagnostic procedure, the waiting times can range from two to 24 weeks.

As reported in a December 2003 story by Kerri Houston for the Frontiers of Freedom Institute titled "Access Denied: Canada's Healthcare System Turns Patients Into Victims," in some instances, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. Houston says that hip-replacement patients often end up non-ambulatory while waiting an average of 20 weeks for the procedure, and that's after having waited 13 weeks just to see the specialist. The wait to get diagnostic scans followed by the wait for the radiologist to read them just might explain why Cleveland, Ohio, has become Canada's hip-replacement center.

Adding to Canada's medical problems is the exodus of doctors. According to a March 2003 story in Canada News (www.canoe.ca), about 10,000 doctors left Canada during the 1990s. Compounding the exodus of doctors is the drop in medical school graduates. According to Houston, Ontario has chosen to turn to nurses to replace its bolting doctors. It's "creating" 369 new positions for nurse practitioners to take up the slack for the doctor shortage.

Some patients avoided long waits for medical services by paying for private treatment. In 2003, the government of British Columbia enacted Bill 82, an "Amendment to Strengthen Legislation and Protect Patients." On its face, Bill 82 is to "protect patients from inadvertent billing errors." That's on its face. But according to a January 2004 article written by Nadeem Esmail for the Fraser Institute's Forum and titled "Oh to Be a Prisoner," Bill 82 would disallow anyone from paying the clinical fees for private surgery, where previously only the patients themselves were forbidden from doing so. The bill also gives the government the power to levy fines of up to $20,000 on physicians who accept these fees or allow such a practice to occur. That means it is now against Canadian law to opt out of the Canadian health-care system and pay for your own surgery.

Health care can have a zero price to the user, but that doesn't mean it's free or has a zero cost. The problem with a good or service having a zero price is that demand is going to exceed supply. When price isn't allowed to make demand equal supply, other measures must be taken. One way to distribute the demand over a given supply is through queuing -- making people wait. Another way is to have a medical czar who decides who is eligible, under what conditions, for a particular procedure -- for example, no hip replacement or renal dialysis for people over 70 or no heart transplants for smokers.

I'm wondering just how many Americans would like Canada's long waiting lists, medical czars deciding what treatments we get and an exodus of doctors.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 9:07am
I have epilepsy, so please have a little look to the epilepsy board in health and the Pfizer Scandal.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 9:46am
Wouldn't a lot of America's health care problems be resolved if we required doctors to work at reduced rates to repay the government, and it's tax-paying citizens, for subsidizing their education? No doctor in America paid, in full, for his or her education. All private schools receive at least some of their operating cost from tax breaks and direct grants from government money. (Read that, tax-payer money, as in me.) State university medical schools receive even more. So, how about figuring what their education cost was, in toto, subtract the amount of tuition they paid, and require them to render services equal to the subsidized part?

Why, exactly, should a medical school be organized as a "not-for profit" corporation, in the first place?

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 10:31am
Found it: http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-bhepilepsy&msg=1914.1&ctx=0

Pfizer was rightfully held accountable. I'm sure the costs will be passed on, but also drugs are more expensive in the US, too, because of the expenses involved in research. Canada has cheaper drugs, but it is the US that comes up with newer & newer drugs to provide better treatment for diseases. I have a friend that had epilepsy for 40+ years. She's had two surgeries & is now free of seizures. She paid for insurance that covered most of her costs for treatment & surgery. Having personal experience with the Canadian Health Care system, I agree with Walter Williams' assessment.

While our health care system could use improvement, I strongly believe that Canada's system is not the right approach. Beware of what you wish for, you may get it!

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 10:44am
There are many possibilities to help curb medical costs and help provide care to those in need, yours is one, without resorting to the Canadian or British medical "utopia".
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 10:52am
Ask any Canadian, and they'll tell you that their Health Care system is something they would never want to trade away for the American system. Yes, there are waiting lists for some things (I've never experienced it myself, nor has anyone in my extended family). However the bottomline is that we canadians spend a lot less percentage of our GDP, and with that, our citizens are healthier, live longer, and everyone has access to health care. Remember that if people (especially children) get preventive care, the likelyhood of needing serious care later is reduced.

The whole exodus is being overblown. I personally know doctors who have COME BACK from the US, after realizing that while they were making more money in the US, they felt it was way too commercial, didn't like having to deal with the insurance companies and their 'priorities', to name a few issues.

No system is perfect, and we are striving to improve our system and those waiting lists for example. However the bottomline assessment on a system is whether the population is healthy, lives longer, how it sets priorities, and how much it all costs (collectively) to do this. In all these measures, the Canadian system is doing much better than the american system.

I will never understand the thinking that 'health care is not a right' but 'bearing arms' is... Totally twisted thinking in my personal opinion.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 1:34pm
Walter Williams rocks as always! I was just about to post a link to this myself on my reading list.

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 1:46pm

Thankfully indentured servitude is illegal, but if you want to revive it, it would be discriminatory to only impose it on doctors. Do you think

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-18-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 2:21pm

<>


He doesn't really believe that women should be subserviant to men, right?

Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 2:27pm
"Requir" them to work at reduced rates, mandating that they accept subsidized training? Wow, why don't we just make them work for free or for a mandated maximum amount per day of work while we're at it. That would fix everything, since few individuals would want the job in the first place.

~mark

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 2:40pm
I don't think waiting list are shorter in US. Whenever you have to see a specialist as a new patient, I have never got an appointment in less than 3 mos. Also if I go thru the front desk at my obgyn for appointment she will give me a date after two mons. But since I am a patient of many years I know the nurses and doctor so I call their ext to get a sooner appointment. I once tried to get an appointment for endocrinologist in April, and I got appointment for Nov.

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