Liberals Want Canuckistan Health Care, Here In The US! Options

[Boon Mee]

Liberals Want To Bring Soviet Canuckistan's Healthcare Nightmare To The US
There are few things that get liberals more excited than the idea of socializing medicine. Just imagine all the new regulations they could use to boss people around, all the new government workers who'd probably vote Democratic, how much they could raise taxes, and the enormous growth of government that'd result. It's like the holy grail of liberalism!

But socialized medicine isn't working out so well for our old buddies up North in Soviet Canuckistan according to this article from Reuters....

"Canada often boasts its universal health care program shows it is more caring than the United States, but the system is creaking alarmingly, with long wait lists for treatment, and shortages of cash and doctors.

And far from criticizing the United States, some people are choosing to go south of the border to pay for operations in private hospitals -- institutions that are forbidden in Canada by the law that set up the publicly funded system.

..."Few would dispute the prevailing reality of our time: people in this country are increasingly anxious about their ability to get in to see the right health professional at the right time," Prime Minister Paul Martin said on Monday.

"Meanwhile, financial pressures are increasing as our population ages, as medical knowledge...expands, and as beneficial but expensive new treatments become available," he told a top-level meeting designed to rescue medicare."

Boy, it really sounds like socialized medicine solved all of Canada's health care problems doesn't it?

"Medicare eats up C$85 billion ($66 billion) a year in public funds alone and the provinces continually demand more money, with no strings attached. Ottawa says it is prepared to contribute more but insists the provinces agree to benchmarks to ensure the funds are being spent properly."

Let's see, 66 billion dollars a year for what everyone admits is poor service (more on how poor later in this post). Plus, you have to remember that the US has roughly 9.5 times as many people as Canada. So if we spent about the same amount per person as Canada, that means the government would spend about $627 billion dollars a year on health care. Then toss in our out of control, lawsuit happy culture, the fact that we don't have presciption drug price controls like Canada, and the fact that it would cost a little more to get a system like this started than it would after it had been running a few years, and let's figure it would be about....oh...$700 billion a year (and somehow, someway, knowing what I know about how government programs work, I'd bet it would end up being a lot more). Given that we're already running more than a 400 billion dollar deficit a year, that would mean we'd have roughly a trillion dollars a year to make up for somehow. That doesn't sound like such a great deal, especially when you get this kind of service...

"As the politicians bicker, Canadians spend more time waiting in line. A study by the right-wing Fraser Institute this month said that average waiting time for treatment in 2003 rose to 17.7 weeks from 16.5 weeks in 2002.

...Some delays are much longer. Patients in Ontario who require major knee surgery can wait six months to see a specialist and then another 18 months for surgery.

"When I started work 30 years ago it took three weeks to get a patient into a specialist's office. Now it can take six months. There is a lot of inhumanity built into the system," one unhappy family doctor told Reuters."

Just imagine having a severely injured knee. You're walking around on crutches, you're slamming down Tylenol like tic-tacs just to take the pain, and you have to wait TWO YEARS to get it fixed. You also have to keep in mind that it's only going to get worse...

"Experts say the shortage of doctors will only get worse as an increasingly elderly physician population starts to retire over the next decade. And as medical expertise becomes ever more sophisticated, so will the demand and the expense."

Don't let liberals snow you. Despite the problems with our current health care system, socialized medicine would be a huge step backwards from what we already have.

thanks to rwn

[KeepCanadaFree]

It's not perfect, but it's better than what you got.
Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house!

[Boon Mee]

It's not perfect, but it's better than what you got.
Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house!

If it's so much better, why do Canadians come south for treatment?

[John L]

My Canadian friend Tom, who repairs and teaches me how to fix my computer, just got back yesterday. He was over at the house today, just as my main computer crashed(must be a hardware problem), and since Rush was on, he happened to hear Rush mention the Canadian Health system.

he rushed over to the receiver, turned it up and then told me that The Canadian system is terrible. Takes people three months to get visits for illnesses. He HATES the system.

I'll take his work here. It does suck! And FCF is so far gone that anything he says has to be looked at though a complete haze!

[Gore_Lost]

Don't let liberals snow you. Despite the problems with our current health care system, socialized medicine would be a huge step backwards from what we already have.

I agree. I think a major obstacle will be affordable health care, which makes the presidents idea of health savings accounts even more practical.