Posted by
TheChair on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 1:31:46 AM
Today's WSJ ran
this editorial piece on Canadian health care. The system isn't too bad so long as you don't need a specialist or surgery. Or ER. Or an MRI. Or preventive screening.
My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.
The author follows with a couple of typical patient-nearly-died anecdotes where they skipped over to the U.S and saved their own lives by paying an American doctor out of pocket. Canada is now using the U.S. system as a release valve, and is allowing--and relying on--more and more private clinics to pop up to rescue the waiting. A kind of glasnost and perestroika to save the core of the system.
Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."
If Congress and Obama saddle us with a "government option" health care bill (what Hugh Hewitt calls single-payer on the installment plan), we will wind up like Canada inside of a few years. And then where will Canadians go to save themselves? Where will we?