Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (237830)	6/18/2005 10:15:12 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1571408

Canadian health care balance sheet By Steve Chapman June 18, 2005 To critics of the American health care system, Shangri-La is not a fantasy but a shimmering reality, though it goes by another name: Canada. Any debate on health care eventually arrives at the point where one participant says, "We should have what Canadians have. Free care, universal access and low cost -- who could ask for more?" Well, plenty of people could ask for more -- starting with the Supreme Court of Canada. Last week, ruling on a challenge to the health care in the Province of Quebec, the court sent a clear message south: Don't believe the hype. The program, said the court, has such serious flaws it violates constitutional rights and must be changed fundamentally. And the flaws, far from being unique to Quebec, are part of the basic structure of Canada's health-care policy. No one doubts the American model has serious defects, particularly rising costs and lack of access to medical insurance. But anyone who thinks the Canadians have come up with a magical solution is doomedto disappointment. The dirty secret of the system is that universal access is no guarantee of treatment. Sick Canadians spend months and even years on waiting lists for surgery and other procedures. In 1993, the average wait to see a specialist after getting a doctor's referral was nine weeks. Since then, according to the Fraser Institute of Vancouver, it has increased to 18 weeks. The typical patient needing orthopedic surgery has time to get pregnant and deliver a baby before being called. The Supreme Court cited the testimony of one orthopedic surgeon that 95 percent of patients in Canada waited more than a year for knee replacements -- many of them in limbo for two years. In some cases, the delay lasts longer than the person enduring it. Or as the Supreme Court put it: "Patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care." Not only does the government subject its citizens to painful and even fatal delays in the public system, it bars them from private-market alternatives. You see, it's illegal for private insurers to pay for services covered by the public system. That policy is what forced the Supreme Court to order changes. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance," it declared, "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The program has created a gap between supply and demand wider than Hudson Bay. Its failings, however, go further. The single-payer approach, for example, is often held up as the only way to simultaneously control costs and deliver quality care. In fact, Canada has somehow managed to do neither. After adjusting for the age of the population, the Fraser Institute compared 27 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that guarantee universal health-care access. By some mysterious alchemy, Canada has proportionately fewer physicians than most of the nations but spends more on health care than any but Iceland. It would be a dubious feat to control costs only by depriving people of treatment. But forcibly depriving people of treatment while letting costs surge is no achievement at all. Page 1 of 2 next » \| Email \| Print \| Subscribe