Year Wait For Prostate Cancer Surgery Under Socialized Medicine
The beauty of capitalism is that it allows resources to be distributed to meet needs as naturally as water seeking its level. Consider all the goods available at your local supermarket, all of them stocked fresh as often as needed. What would it be like if it were left to government bureaucrats to accomplish such a complicated task?
Socialized healthcare in Canada offers a clue. Since the free market has been taken out of the equation, resources are not distributed rationally. For example, there are four times as many urologists practicing in Nova Scotia as in Newfoundland, although Nova Scotia has less than double the population.
The shortage of urologists in eastern Canada is so severe that patients are waiting about a year for surgery. Laments Andy Grant, a member of a St. John's prostate cancer support group:
First of all, [patients deal with] the shock you might have prostate cancer, then the shock of being confirmed with prostate cancer. Now you have the shock of saying, "I have to wait until next year?"
Actually, they don't have to wait: there's still a free country right across their southern border. But having already paid excessively for their healthcare through taxes, not all Canadians can afford to pay again to actually see a doctor down here.
Not to worry though, the bureaucrats are on top of it. According to the inaptly named Health Minister Ross Wiseman:
We're in the process now of developing a physician human resource plan, and we hope to be able to, either in the early fall or late winter, roll out that strategy. [This] will identify the kinds of specialties and family practice doctors we have — where we need them [and] how many we need — and that will give us then a blueprint for the future.
Look for a workable solution to be successfully implemented sometime around when hell freezes over. In the meantime, tell your prostate cancer to wait.
On a tip from Eoin.
Posted by Van Helsing
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