"Free" Health Care

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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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Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 6:00pm
Welcome back amcanmom!

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 6:18pm

<<Sooo, let me get this straight, you like footing the bill ??? >>


Let me get this straight. You're whining about paying for medicare for the needy, but you want to pay for the treatment of every single hangnail for everyone in the country???

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-15-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 6:35pm
Now you're getting it. We pay them to do a job, vote on legislation and mail us about it when they do or when they don't.

Benefits are benefits. If I don't have a right to health care, they don't either. And if my taxes provide a plan, then I should have access to it, just like they do. I'm not even asking them to pay for it, even though I'm willing to pay for access to it myself.

It's OUR country. OURS. Not the politicians. Not the corporations. OURS. We can make it work any way we want to. If expanding access to the federal medical insurance plans helps cover more people, which will reduce premiums, we can just decide to do it. Because it's OURS.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 6:50pm
<>

Mosts people in his income bracket haven't been in the job market for 20 years.

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 7:59pm
How rude to say I'm whining. I though we were having a discussion of the issue. Still I will try one more time to make myself clear. I hope that you will be more respectful in the future. Are you the moderator here???

I was referring to Medicaid, not Medicare, 2 VERY different programs.

I never said I want to pay for every hangnail, I am discussing the opposite of that. I have been suggesting that we do something different so that we DON'T have to cover people thru medicaid. Please reread my posts, or stop responding inappropriately.

I suggested employer sponsored health insurance, with the cost shared between the employee & the employer, so that people don't have to fall back on medicaid when they get sick. Of course, no one seems to agree that this might be a plan. OK, fine, you have a right to your opinion. But do you, or does anyone else have a plan that does not require the taxpayers, like me & you, covering the cost of medicaid for uninsured people.


<>

< Let me get this straight. You're whining about paying for medicare for the needy, but you want to pay for the treatment of every single hangnail for everyone in the country??? >

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 8:03pm
He was a single man. I respect the decision to not have a family if you cannot provide for it well. Don't you realize a large percentage of our population earns that little for their entire lives?

<>

Mosts people in his income bracket haven't been in the job market for 20 years. Do you know if anyone else in his family worked? >>

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 08-15-2004 - 10:09pm

Sorry, I've subsequently seen that your position is different than what I though it was. The previous debate on this thread & others on this board was about 'free' healthcare like the Canadian system.


I think there is a lot that can be done to reform the current system, and we're probably not too far apart in our positions.


(and I did mean medicaide, btw)


Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Mon, 08-16-2004 - 11:03am
The problem with all this is that given that the taxpayer ends up footing the bill anyhow, through emergency care and medicaid and the like, it's just not cost effective. It's much cheaper to make sure people stay healthy, detect problems earlier (like cancer) than to treat it in high-cost last-resort treatments that also have lower success. It's all about cost-benefit. Prevention and early treatment is cheaper, and keeps the population healthier and hence more productive. A single payer (the government) also saves tons of administrative costs. Even if you don't agree with the principle of 'health care for all', the bottomline remains that it's actually cheaper to go that way. Americans don't rate well on international 'population health' ratings, and yet spend more of their GDP than any other country in the world. Looking at it from purely a 'business perspective', it just doesn't make sense to continue with the multiple-payer, private health care system.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Mon, 08-16-2004 - 11:05am
What about children whose parents don't have insurance? It is their fault too? What does that do to their odds of becoming healthy, productive citizens?
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Mon, 08-16-2004 - 11:16am
If the government is "holding the bag in the end", why not then provide free preventative health care, so that it saves money in the end by reducing the need for 'last resort' care which the government pays?

Insurance companies know that if you invest in an alarm system, you'll cut your chances of getting burglarised, and so they give you a discount.

Also, if you don't smoke and aren't obese, they'll give you a discount on your life insurance and your health insurance.

Wear your sealtbelt, don't smoke, eat healthy, and you can cut your healthcare costs, and increase your life span.

That was also the point of providing citizens basic education (high school diploma). It ensures as many people as possible get educated, so they can become productive citizens, and hence rely less on government, and contribute through taxes.

Healthcare is the same thing, in my opinion.

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