Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Canada's "free" health care and America's future needs
[Robert J. Cihak, M.D., "Canada's Medical Nightmare," Health Care News, The Heartland Institute, 1 September 2004.]
Robert Cihak warns that despite the claims of Canadian health care fans what America needs is less government intervention in health care, not more:
For decades, Canadians have cast pitying glances at us poor American neighbors who actually have to pay for our medical care while they get theirs for "free."
Yet the major candidates in Canada's recent national election both agreed the country's health care system is failing. They made the usual socialist diagnosis of "not enough money." None of the candidates mentioned government control as what ails the Canadian system.
On this side of the border, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), with presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, also from Massachusetts, in tow, promotes Canadian health care to U.S. voters, in the hope we too can have "free" medical care.
Barring epidemics and other disasters, fewer than one out of 10 people in prosperous societies will face a major medical crisis in any one year. Those suffering people, however, are the ones who need help the most, and the aging of the baby boomers in the United States makes it likely more serious illnesses will afflict more Americans in the next couple of decades. The kind of minor health care services the Canadian system provides well are not what America's aging Baby Boomers will need most urgently in years to come.
America's health care system already includes too much Canadian-style bureaucratic delay and inefficiency. For example, the slow acceptance by Medicare and Medicaid of medical innovation, their exacting paperwork requirements, delayed and low payments of claims, and the threat of overzealous prosecution by health care bureaucrats are driving doctors out of business and giving patients fewer medical options.
Fixing those flaws would seem to be a much more promising prospect than a further move down the road Canada has followed to high costs and low quality of health care.
[Robert J. Cihak, M.D., "Canada's Medical Nightmare," Health Care News, The Heartland Institute, 1 September 2004.]
Robert Cihak warns that despite the claims of Canadian health care fans what America needs is less government intervention in health care, not more:
For decades, Canadians have cast pitying glances at us poor American neighbors who actually have to pay for our medical care while they get theirs for "free."
Yet the major candidates in Canada's recent national election both agreed the country's health care system is failing. They made the usual socialist diagnosis of "not enough money." None of the candidates mentioned government control as what ails the Canadian system.
On this side of the border, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), with presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, also from Massachusetts, in tow, promotes Canadian health care to U.S. voters, in the hope we too can have "free" medical care.
Barring epidemics and other disasters, fewer than one out of 10 people in prosperous societies will face a major medical crisis in any one year. Those suffering people, however, are the ones who need help the most, and the aging of the baby boomers in the United States makes it likely more serious illnesses will afflict more Americans in the next couple of decades. The kind of minor health care services the Canadian system provides well are not what America's aging Baby Boomers will need most urgently in years to come.
America's health care system already includes too much Canadian-style bureaucratic delay and inefficiency. For example, the slow acceptance by Medicare and Medicaid of medical innovation, their exacting paperwork requirements, delayed and low payments of claims, and the threat of overzealous prosecution by health care bureaucrats are driving doctors out of business and giving patients fewer medical options.
Fixing those flaws would seem to be a much more promising prospect than a further move down the road Canada has followed to high costs and low quality of health care.
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