"Free" Health Care

Avatar for schifferle
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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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Avatar for schifferle
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Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 5:25pm
A few notes from a Libertarian:

http://boortz.com/nuze/200406/06152004.html



Tuesday, June 15, 2004

IT OUGHT TO BE A RIGHT

Neal Boortz





"OK ... let's go through this again....if you claim medical care as a right, then you are claiming a right to someone's time or property. In either case, you are making a claim to a portion of that person's life. You cannot obtain medical care without someone either spending time on you or supplying you with some sort of product, be it drugs or medical devices. If you're claiming a right to a medical practitioner's time, then you are claiming a right to that portion of his life. If you are claiming a right to some drug or medical equipment, then you are claiming a right to whatever portion of someone's life they spent acquiring or creating that product. Any way you cut it, your claim of a right to health care is a message to someone else that you own a portion of their very existence.

So, where do we go from here? Once we accept the idea that one American can claim a right to a portion of another American's life, what's next? If you have a right to health care, why not a right to a home? Why not a right to a warm coat in winter? Why not a right to groceries? Apparently health care should be a right because you might die without it. If that's the case, then food should certainly be a right because you're flat-out going to die without it...

Actually, this is all quite academic. Socialized medicine is absolutely inevitable in the United States. Youngsters dreaming of becoming doctors are dreaming of becoming government employees. The horror stories from socialized medicine countries ... stories like four-month waits for surgery ... will carry datelines like Cleveland or Houston."






iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2004
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 5:26pm
Yes, I waited 4 months for an appt. with a specialist (dermatologist) and I consider my health plan to be excellent. There just aren't that many specialists; that's why they're special, see? The Canadian example is not unusual in any health system in the U.S. of which I am aware. If they had to wait that long to see a GP in Canada, then that would be something. Even people I know that have had (serious, but non-emergency) surgery have to wait several weeks at the least and months at the far end.

Sorry, I find the article to have poor examples. Waiting is always part of the health care system.

Glassy

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 10:14am
--

We have not set up an Iraqi healthcare system. However their government wants to handle it is their business.

--

First, I did not say we 'Set up an Iraqi Healthcare system'.

Secondly, It might be a good idea, for you to actually read the bills you're supportive of. Especially when they deal with 87 billion dollars+ before making statements like that. You might actually see money going to their HC system.


Edited 7/23/2004 10:16 am ET ET by go_left

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 12:30pm
Limited emergency medical aid can hardly be compared to establishing a socialize healthcare system.

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 12:35pm
Your predilection for the irrelevant is a bit wierd, noone said anything about socializing anything in Iraq, period.

I only said the truth: You give Iraqi's healthcare, it's called bringing them democracy.

Want to insure the millions of children in the US, the right calls it socalism.

Just come out and say what you feel: Do you feel that all US children should have instant and free access to healthcare or not?

I think the children should. If that's liberal, then call me a John Kerry Weenie!

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 1:45pm

<< Do you feel that all US children should have instant and free access to healthcare or not? >>


No. I think they should sell matches on street corners to pay for it.

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 8:49pm
I don't know where you get that you subsidize drug development! Canadian companies does its share of drug developments, and our government subsidizes lots of it! You've got it in reverse! Lots of new treatments have also come from Canada - from cancer to transplants, and many others. There are developments on both sides of the border. Mind you, we are 10% of your population, so that must be taken into consideration. Also, my point isn't as much about those people who are in fact covered by private health care, it's about those who aren't, and are yet not covered eiether by your "national" health care (forgot the name... Medicaid I think...). Children don't chose what families they are born into, but yet depending on where they are born, they may get get heathcare, none at all, or anything in between. To me, a big part of what being an 'evolved society' is about providing all citizens some fundamental 'rights', and I see healthcare as a birth right. A lot of people out there (myself included) find it abhorrent that medecine is a 'business' run by corporations whose objective is to make money. But clearly, some people (including you), just don't see it that way. And that's your right. I guess the bottomline is that I am happy to be living in Canada... I don't know anyone who has gone to the US for any treatment there. I've heard the occasional stories of people who fly into the US to get specialized treatment not available here, and I've also heard of people from the US coming to our children's hospital here for specialized treatment not available in the US (chatted at lenght with one such mother one winter night..).

Anyway, I'm sure you'll think we are really crazy here in Quebec (a province in Canada), because not only do we have healthcare, but dental care for children, one year paid maternity/paternity leave, a province-wide quality daycare program that gives everyone access to $5/day daycare (actually, it was raised to $7 a few months ago..).

Remember we do all this, and yet we pay a MUCH SMALLER percentage of our GDP on healthcare. No middleman (insurance companies).

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 9:00pm
Tried crossing from Detroit into Windsor? Americans do it all the time.. They have very different comments that those two...

Have you ever visited Canada? It's nothing like what that article implies. I know two women from the mid-west who moved to Canada with their canadian husbands, and neither of them wants to go back to live there. One of them had a chance, as her husband got a very lucrative job offer (high tech), but they chose to stay.

Last time there was a big 'exodus' between Canada and the US, it was from the loyalists and the slaves coming to Canada. If we're having it so bad here, why are we not all trying to move there, like they do in Mexico. Have you heard of a lot of illegal 'canadian' immigrants in the US? I gather we had some illegal american immigrants, but they were young men who did not want to be killed or kill in Vietnam...

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 9:05pm
There's no wait to see a GP. You can go to the emergency room (if it's rather urgent), or to walk-in clinic, or to a whole number of family clinics.

Some surgeries and referals to specialists do have a waiting time, but everyone gets the same importance. Priorities are set depending on the actual urgency of people's problem, which is the way it should be!

oops. fix spelling. Now -> "No"


Edited 7/25/2004 10:07 am ET ET by nicecanadianlady

Avatar for independentgrrrl
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 11:49pm
<>

That's his schtick. He admits his wife wears the pants in that family. :D However, I've heard irate callers not familiar with Williams scold him.

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