"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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Hello psychomutt!
Welcome to the board!
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
You read too many slanted stories. I kindly suggest you ask real canadians, and visit an actual canadian hospital. Comparing apples with apples of course - a big city hospital in the US versus a big city hospital in Canada.
Personally, I don't want an insurance company "deciding what treatment or drug is available for my loved ones based on outdated technology, penny-pinching procedures, and a restricted pharmacological list"
Read carefully.... It compares the mortality rates of african-american premies with that of canadian premies irrespective of race, and then concludes that it is safer to be born an african-american than a canadian!
The reality is that the mortality rate of african american babies is lower than that of white americans, and also lower than american babies irrespective of race. Another reality is that african american babies are two times MORE LIKELY to be of low birthweight, for a variety of reasons that not necessarily affect mortality.
http://www.mmhs.com/clinical/peds/english/hrnewborn/lbw.htm
In other words what it states is also true if you replace 'canadian' with 'american'.
A PERFECT example of SPIN
P.S. did you know that gender also places a big role in mortality rate of preemies. Let's create a SPIN on that one too.
Edited 8/23/2004 4:10 pm ET ET by nicecanadianlady
Err no... if you can pay $1,000 for an apartment which you need to live in, you can pay $400 per month for healthcare which you need to stay healthy.
<< psychomutt wrote - " $400 a month is too much for health care." >>
< Err no... if you can pay $1,000 for an apartment which you need to live in, you can pay $400 per month for healthcare which you need to stay healthy.>
Venus
You seem to have confused not wanting to pay what it costs for coverage, with it costing too much. You may as well demand Kerry subsidize rentals.... the problem is you accept one charge, and reject another, both seem to be valid (rent and healthcare).
<<Clearly, you have never walked into one of our hospitals, >>
And I hope I will never have to.
"Cleanliness practices have been dangerously eroded and hospitals are overcrowded. "We have a big problem in terms of infection control," Dr. Karl Weiss, an infectious disease specialist at Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, told the medical association journal. "We are practising 21st-century medicine in a 19th-century environment." http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1091787823624&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795
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They set price controls.
<<There is only a handful of drugs available in the US not available in Canada , and the REVERSE is also true. Of that handful, most are birth control, which are clearly not the kind that would be paid by our system as they would not be provided in a hospital. >>
Weren't you going to look into this for us? What about all those drugs that are availble in some provinces, but not others?
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Where did that come from? The articles I posted said that cost was a big factor in why certain drugs were not available in Canada. That's not the situation with BC.
<sit an actual canadian hospital. Comparing apples with apples of course - a big city hospital in the US versus a big city hospital in Canada. >>
Your bias is hilarious. I could say the exact same thing to you.
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They don't. One of the problems with the Canadian system is that the govt. decides what the regualations are and they pay for treatment. With out system, the govt. regulates it, but because they don't also have to pay the bill, they are concerned with patient care and not keeping costs down. I chose my words very specifically because they apply to what I've learned about the Canadian system. I'm sure you enjoyed throwing them back at me, but they are not applicable here.
We have the most technologically advanced healthcare system in the world, and that technology is available on scale that is not even close in Canada. http://www.mackinac.org/archives/2000/v2000-12.pdf
While there are a few notable cases that make the news about issues with insurance companies not covering some expensive procedure, that is the exception, not the rule, as penny-pinching is in the Canadian system, and since you've been looking into it, what have you been able to find out about drug availablity in the US vs. Canada?
Renee ~~~
Talk about spin! My head is reeling! The link you posted
Renee ~~~
"The reality is that the mortality rate of african american PREMIE babies is lower than that of white americans PREMIES, and also lower than american babies irrespective of race"
WHich is what that article is talking about. I did read it carefully. The US has one of the HIGHEST INFANT MORTALITY rate in the western world! However, once a baby IS BORN prematurely, it gets great medical care in the US, and that care is MARGINALLY better than in Canada. But that has to do with the fact that there are more NEONATALOGISTS and more PRACTICE due to the huge amounts of premature births. Premature births are highly preventable! Where would you rather be born? In country with a very high rate of premature births and hence high infant mortality, in great part because of the lack of pregnancy medical care, but where if you do get born prematurely, your chances of survival are good or in a country with much lower rates of prematurity (and other pregnancy complications), but where that country ranks a tad bit lower in the survival rates of preemies (very marginal.. I had posted the stats earlier in this thread).
WOuld you rather not get cancer or get cancer and the best treatment in the world for cancer?
That's the bottomline. Infant mortality in the US is staggering for a western country. And yes, it's not just about health care, its about drug use, alcoholism in pregnancy, etc.. but these are also problems in Canada. Research does conclude that the main reason for the high infant mortality rate in the US is in great part due to the lack of maternal care, and poverty. Those are our next generations of citizens, our future. Should we not ALL participate in insuring they at least grow up to be heathly?
Well, I stand CORRECTED! According to that article, premie babies don't even do MARGINALLY better than in Canada.
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/333/21343/350769.html
Edited 8/24/2004 1:17 pm ET ET by nicecanadianlady
Edited 8/24/2004 1:19 pm ET ET by nicecanadianlady
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