Canadian healthcare house of cards
In the Orwellian world of Socialist Politics, healthcare may be the only government program that Liberals claim is improved by spending less on it. The internet if full of reports claiming that the Canadian Socialized Healthcare System is superior to America’s Private System because IT COSTS LESS!! Since when has throwing money at a problem become passé for the Liberals? Ask a Liberal how to solve the Public School problem; they will answer “more funding.” How to solve Medicare: “more funding.” How to solve Social Security: “more funding.” Only with healthcare and maybe the military do Liberals claim that the system can be improved by spending less. Reports celebrate the fact that the US spends 14.1% of its GDP on a private healthcare system, and the Canadian Socialized System only takes 9.1% of GDP, a statistic that totally ignores that much the healthcare spending in America is either on lawsuits, or on defensive medical practices to avoid lawsuits. Simple tort reform, outcome based standards for care and insurance form standardization and simplification would go long way to narrowing this gap.
And just what do the Canadians get for such saving so much on healthcare? Not much. If one uses Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology as a metric for cutting edge research and development, on both a per capita and total basis the US dwarfs the accomplishments of Canada. The US has 85 verses the Canadian’s 2 Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology, and on a per capita basis the US out numbers the Canadians 5 to 1. Using the availability of state of the art medical instruments as a metric, the Frazer Institute reports that Canada “currently ranks a depressing nineteenth in a comparison of 25 OECD countries for MRI availability.” The US ranks sixth. Doctors per capita isn’t much better either, with many Doctors leaving for the higher paying American System, “current data (again from the OECD) shows that Canada has one of the lowest ranks in terms of number of doctors per capita, 23rd out of 29, better only than countries like Mexico, Turkey, and Korea… for every one doctor permanently migrating from the U.S. to Canada, there are 18 Canadian doctors who are leaving permanently for the U.S.” Waiting lines also fail to measure up, “averaged across all 12 medical specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, total waiting time rose from 13.3 weeks in 1998 to 14 weeks in 1999, a 5.3 percent increase. Waiting times have increased a dramatic 51 percent since 1993, when the median total wait for Canadian patients to receive treatment was 9.3 weeks.” One study reports “median waiting time for a tonsillectomy in the province of Saskatchewan: 80 weeks.” You can bet that is due more to the lack of political clout of the Saskatchewanians than absence of healthcare needs.
No wonder “Nine out of ten Canadians feel that bad management, lack of funding and
shortage of medical staff are responsible for the current problems in the
Canadian health care system” Socialized systems are notorious for providing rations to the most politically powerful districts, and starving the politically weak or undesirable districts. Many people simply give up waiting and cross the border and pay for care in the US. The US experiences similar difficulties in its experiment in socialized medicine: the VA System. Powerful politicians constantly bicker over scarce healthcare resourced as they barter for more spending within their district. The final allocation of these resources has more to do with who is negotiating, than the healthcare needs of the electorate. Unless you have Ted Kennedy representing your district, you might as well take a seat and wait.
Having a parasitic socialized medical system is easy if you have a host like the US right next door from which to feed. It is easy to afford socialized healthcare if you only need to spend 1.1% of your GDP, less than one half the NATO average, on the military. Canadians spent 12.3 billion dollars on their military for 2002-3, the US spent 400 billion. As long as the Canadians have America as their neighbor, they have no real fear of being attacked, and their military spending proves it. It is easy to afford socialized medicine when you don’t have to pay for any of the drug R&D, or make any of the risky investments characteristic of the drug and medical instrument industry. The Canadians simply let the US do all the heavy work of discovering and producing new drugs and cutting edge medical instruments, and then they use the coercive power of their government to extort discounts from US companies. Don’t forget the drugs Americans want to re-import from Canada are US manufactured drugs, not drugs produced by Canadian companies.
To address these inequities and settle this issue once and for all, America should declare that it will not intervene if Canada is ever invaded, and impose a trade blockade preventing Canada from importing US manufactured healthcare products and drugs. If Canada continues to exist at all, cut off from its host the parasitic Canadian healthcare system would collapse without any sizable source of domestic drugs, medical supplies of instruments. Until America can rely on Canada to provide our national security, drugs, medical instruments and hospital supplies, the Canadian Healthcare System is not a realistic model for the US to follow. Turning the World’s healthcare host into a parasite would not only destroy the American healthcare system, it would also starve the parasitic systems that it feeds. For this very reason, Canada should pray that America never decides to copy its Parasitic Socialized System.
http://secure.cihi.ca/imaging/AR1043_2003h...ighlight_e.htmlhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/mri.htmlhttp://www.parapundit.com/archives/000634.htmlhttp://www.legermarketing.com/documents/sp...m/010709eng.pdfhttp://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/for...section_12.htmlhttp://www.columbustownhall.com/townhall/i...&st=0&#entry169 
Columbus Townhall > Forum > Politics > National > Health Care (Moderators: Peter, CTH Public Relations)
Topic: Canadian healthcare house of cards
