Apolitical Staples

The problem is, the British model doesn’t work very well.

What are you basing that on? Does it work worse than ours? Why?

The British health care model is interesting because the costs are so low, not because care is so good. I’ve lived in both the UK and Canada, and prefer the Canadian system, myself. There is a marked difference between private and public care in the UK, and not just in terms of wait times. It’s still better than the American non-system, but definitely sub-optimal.

U.S. blogger Ezra Klein wrote a series of posts that might interest you, by the way. I don’t agree at all with his conclusions, but his research is excellent, and worth a look.

Greg, go to google news and put in NHS.

If we have to ration, why not do so by patient: Healthcare Options Part Two A few days ago I discussed how our society may need to make a tough decision in allocating our health care dollars. How fully 90% of a person’s cause of health care spending occur in the last two weeks of life. To further support my argument (which so far has only been with myself) I ask a question that I see as rhetorical, but might be useful. If there was only one dollar available for healthcare, or only enough for a single treatment how would most reasonable Canadians wish it expended? — On a person who has lived eighty years and had a chance to play with their grandchildren? — On a child of five? — For a transgender operation? — To piece back together a drunk driver who ran into a concrete abuttment. Of course, our current system insists on not making a choice and trying to accomplish all these needs and many more. We have to work toward making choices in our health care system. Isn’t it useful to make it on the basis of priorities?

Any “public system first” model would need to clarify timelines: is this an annual quota, reset every Jan 1, so you hope that you get sick at the right time of year?

I’d prefer a weekly basis, perhaps based on a formula considering the percentage of a doctor’s income, time, and count of similar service classes: if a doctor doesn’t spend enough time on “public” services, claw back funds to spend on hiring another “public” specialist.

Just allowing private delivery of health care would solve many problems. Governments would no longer have to spend money on equipment, salaries for people in the private facilities, building the facilities. These saved monies could then be applied to paying for the procedures (at the same prescribed levels paid to public facilities). We don’t even need to provide private insurance. This approach would shorten waiting times and would not change the public pay system we all want. I don’t understand why no provincial government is looking at this approach. In fact, McGuinty closed private MRI clinics (bought them out). And Alberta and Quebec are going the private insurance route. They could at least expanded on private delivery and see what outcomes it provides before going the insurance route.

C’mon you guys, shake out the cobwebs and use your noggins. Something cannot possibly be valuable and free at the same time.

It is a logical impossibility for something valuable, such as an MRI scan, to be made available in the same city for two different prices: $0.00 dollars in one queue, and $500 in the other queue. Either the waiting list for the “free” queue will be many months or even years long, or else the services will be so severely rationed that actually getting served in it will be a crap shoot. Because it is in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, the free queue will be highly influenced by “who you know”, and whether the people running the system think that you’re a “good” patient.

The only reason for creating medicare in the first place was because “poor people” allegedly were not getting medical treatment. But of course it’s the poor people who were screwed by medicare and who don’t get treated, because (1) they’re stuck on the waiting list which everyone else can afford to bypass, (2) they drink and smoke and talk uncouthly and get therefore triaged out of the queue by the elitists who are managing the queue, (3) they don’t “know people” who can bump them ahead, and (4) no one will offer them private charity to get the treatment, because “the government should pay for that”.

And even if all laws of logic and all facts of human behavior could somehow be suspended and this wonderful, paradoxical multi-queued system could be implemented, how wealthy could a country be when it is pouring money into a free, public welfare system which wastes at least 80% of the money allocated to it on bureaucratic overhead and plain old incompetence and corruption?

Think about food: people spend far more money on food in their lives than on medical care (not surprising since it is far more important for survival), yet the non-welfare, non-communistic, non-rationed, free-market food production and distribution system in Canada ensures that even the poorest people can afford superb, fresh, varied and healthy food from a selection of thousands of different providers. Wherever there is a free market for food, you find fat poor people. Wherever there is a socialist food system, you find fat bureaucrats and starving poor people. That’s exactly what all you would-be medicare central planners will achieve: those in or connected to the government will be playing tennis in the Bahamas at age 100, but average Joes will continue to die on the waiting list for MRIs, heart bypasses, dialysis, hip replacements, chemotherapy, …