By Klaus Rohrich ——Bio and Archives--February 2, 2009
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“But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.)”The system Morris describes is currently in effect in Canada, who along with Cuba and North Korea, is one of the world’s only three countries where private, for profit healthcare is illegal. While I cannot comment about Cuba’s or North Korea’s healthcare system, I do consider myself somewhat of an expert on the Canadian model, as I am a regular user of that less than smoothly running system. Canada outlawed all private medical care with the passage of the Canada Health Act of 1984. Within the first decade governments were forced to control their healthcare expenses by rationing care. Rationing was achieved by limiting enrollments in medical schools, which served to reduce the number of healthcare professionals dramatically and, of course created huge shortages in the healthcare system. Twenty-five years after the enactment of the Canada Health Act, Canada’s healthcare expenditures are among the highest of all countries offering universal access to healthcare. In fact the only country out of 28 that spends more on healthcare than Canada is Iceland. So one would think that with a superior level of spending healthcare in Canada would have far superior outcomes to those of other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Out of 28 countries ranked by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian public policy think-tank, Canada ranked 22nd to 26th in the number of doctors available per 1,000 population. (The reason for the range in ranking is because Canada was exactly on par with Korea, Poland and Britain) The Fraser Institute concluded that the Canadian healthcare model “is inferior to those that are in place in other countries of the OECD. It produces inferior age-adjusted access to physicians and technology, produces longer waiting times, is less successful in preventing deaths from preventable causes and costs more than almost all of the other systems that have comparable objectives.” So what does healthcare in Canada look like in tangible terms? For openers, access to medical specialists is so curtailed that it routinely takes upward of two months from the time a patient is referred to a specialist before the patient is even called back with an appointment. A four to six-month wait for an appointment with a specialist is the rule, not the exception, with some procedures, such as joint replacements, taking in excess of three years from initially being seen by a general practitioner to having the procedure completed. As was predicted by many researchers back in 1984 when the Canada Health Act was first passed, the single payer healthcare model would end up with large percentages of the population having no access to primary care physicians at all. In fact in Canada it’s common for there to be doctor lotteries as new physicians entering practice are bombarded with “applications” by people desperate to acquire a family doctor. While 15% of the US population currently doesn’t have health insurance, 20% of the Canadian population does not have ready access to a family doctor. The old saying that one should be careful what one wishes for is one that will be especially relevant to all Americans in the next four years as the Obama administration rolls out its plans to socialize American society. If you’re interested in what American healthcare could look like, say 10 years down the road, have a good look at the Canadian system and hope that this is one change Obama will not be able to bring about.
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Klaus Rohrich is senior columnist for Canada Free Press. Klaus also writes topical articles for numerous magazines. He has a regular column on RetirementHomes and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism. His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, among others. He lives and works in a small town outside of Toronto.