Walk up to a Canadian and ask him what sets his country apart from the USA,
and he'll likely reply with one of five things: Gun control; a less
hawkish, more diplomatic approach to world affairs; a collective preoccupation
with adverse weather patterns; a burning passion for hockey; and a socialized
health care system. Canada's health care system is its touchstone. Canadians
are literally brainwashed into believing that Canada wouldn't be the great
country it is without its health care program. According to canadian
lore, America is full of people who are paying through the eye-teeth for medical
treatment, and if you're not wealthy, you either don't get the treatment you
need, or you declare bankruptcy.
Being a Canadian myself, I grew up hearing all about these nightmarish tales of
the "evil american health care system". All the while, I
was having to go to the doctor three days in a row, only to be turned away each
time because the doctor had seen his maximum allowable government-funded quota
of patients for the day. In my home province of British Columbia, 24
people died in one year while waiting for heart surgery. On the other
side of the country, kids in desperate need of heart surgery at the Hospital for
Sick Children in Toronto were being sent home. At Moncton Hospital in
New Brunswick, patients were being kept in hallways and closets because of a
lack of beds. In some cases, ambulance workers spoke of how they
would drive dying patients from one emergency room to another in search of
available beds or adequate equipment.
Despite all these horror stories, Canadians somehow remain convinced that
medical care in Canada is preferable to that in the US. The reality
is that socialized medicine is an abysmal failure. Under this system,
everyone is supposed to receive equal access to health care, but what really
ends up happening is that no one receives any care at all. But at
least we're all in the SAME sinking boat, eh?
Under the Canadian system, anyone who wants to escape this disaster of Titanic
proportions has no choice but to look elsewhere for health care. This,
in effect, creates the two-tier system of which Canadians are so deathly afraid. Those
with money are going to the USA for treatment while everyone else is stuck
dealing with the inexpensive-but totally ineffective-Canadian system.
Note to Hillary Clinton and others like her who want to bring socialized health
care to the USA: When people in a country that has such a program are
turning to one that doesn't in order to get the treatment they require, that
should be a bit of a hint for you.
A citizen of the USA is twice as likely to have open heart surgery as a
Canadian. Seattle, Washington--with a population of roughly half a
million people--has more CAT scanners than the entire province of British
Columbia, which has a population of 3 million. There are more MRI
scanners in Washington state than in all of Canada. Why such a
shortage of diagnostic equipment? Because in Canada, there is only
one, single, giant "HMO", and it's run by the government. The
government decides where to allocate resources and where to cut costs. And
if you don't like your government-run HMO in Canada, there are no competing HMOs
you can turn to in order to obtain better treatment. The only
alternatives you have are to whine and complain, or to fork out some money to
get treatment in the USA.
Hillary's dream is to have a socialized health care system in the USA, along
with a Patient's Bill of Rights that would allow for people to sue their HMO. What
you'd effectively have then is people suing the government for not providing
them with the care they require. I hope Hillary has borrowed Al
Gore's "lock box" to save up those pennies, because if Canada's
socialized health system is any indication, she'd better get ready for the
mother of all class action suits against her proposed "government-run HMO."
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