"Free" Health Care
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| Wed, 07-21-2004 - 8:58am |
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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Why, exactly, should a medical school be organized as a "not-for profit" corporation, in the first place?
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!
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.
Renee ~~~
Renee ~~~
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 ~~~
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He doesn't really believe that women should be subserviant to men, right?
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
~mark
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