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aceventura3 · 03-01-2006, 03:25 PM

I saw this in today's Investors Business Daily. It appears that the private sector is responding to a few problems with Canada's national healthcare plan

Quote:

Private Matters

Posted 2/28/2006

Health Care: This page has diligently documented the horror stories of Canada's state medical system, which has been held out as the model the U.S. should follow. There's one more fact to add, but this one is promising.

Private health clinics are opening right and left, despite the fact that they are illegal. So says The New York Times, which seems to finally realize that state-run health care is cruel and unsustainable.

Given the newspaper's long tradition of promoting such programs, we marveled at its story last Sunday acknowledging that Canada's "publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down."

But this is nothing new. For years, alarming tales have seeped across the border.

They tell of absurd waits — often taking months — to see a doctor; of even longer waits — sometimes fatal — to see specialists; of bureaucratic rationing of care; of overcrowded hospitals; of substandard care from harried professionals once patients are seen; of an exodus of doctors and nurses who find the system intolerable; of shortages of modern equipment; and of costs so high they're crowding out other public spending and squeezing the average taxpaying household for half its income.

Over a one-year period studied by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 71 patients in Ontario died while languishing on the waiting list for heart-bypass surgery. Another 121 were more fortunate — they merely lost their places in line because they became too sick to survive surgery while they waited.

Cancer victims fare no better. The average patient has to wait 5 1/2 weeks from the time he's referred by his family doctor to the time he's treated by an oncologist. Enough time, in other words, to die from the fright of having a serious disease go untreated.

But the Times, to its credit, has revealed another side of the Canadian health care story: the proliferation of private clinics.

Canada is the only developed country that deems private care for basic medical services to be against the law. The others are Cuba and North Korea — hardly the kind of international company that Canadians should want to keep no matter how much the system is a part of its "national identity."

Government officials are inexplicably fighting to keep the mess in place. They are losing, however. The Times reports that about one private clinic is opening in Canada each week. Among those leading the charge to freedom-based medical treatment is Dr. Brian Day. The president and medical director of the Cambie Surgery Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, Day plans to open more private medical centers across the country and is daring government officials, who threaten to fine him, to bring it on.

(Curiously, Day keeps a photograph of himself with Fidel Castro behind his desk. We can only assume it's to remind him how much worse things could get if Canada doesn't move away from a state-run system.)

Canada's ban on private health care began to crack last June, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of Quebec's Charter to forbid someone to buy health services. The court took up the case after a brave, desperate fellow by the name of George Zeliotis sued when told by the state he would have to wait a year to have hip-replacement surgery. It was a rational decision.

Canada's woes are sadly typical of nations with similar health care systems. When, we wonder, will the political left in this country make its own rational decision and abandon the effort to nationalize health care? Surely it can no longer deny that the Canadian system it has extolled for so long is anything but a miserable failure.

Link: http://www.investors.com/editorial/I...issue=20060228