It's Your Health...

Angry in the Great White North has an article today on Canadian health care that is essential reading for anyone who thinks Hillary knows what she's talking about on that subject. Quotes in that article are from an article in the National Post of Canada.

There are huge problems in the imposition of any national health care system:

• The standard level of care drops to mediocrity
• The attention of doctors is diverted from the patient to politics and paperwork
• In the long term, the system becomes a disincentive to anyone thinking of a medical career

I was resident in Canada when OHIP was initiated in the early seventies. At that time, fees were based on an annual survey of physicians in the Province (Ontario), and OHIP would pay 90% of the average fees determined in that survey. The remaining 10% was the responsibility of the individual, though most employers then provided coverage that picked up the 10%, as well as the cost of meds. Later, a stink was raised, and the 10% was eliminated, on the premise that it denied health care to some who could not afford even that percentage. That event was critical, as it was at that point that the individual ceased to have any voice in his own care -- he was no longer the customer.

When the doctor need only satisfy a bureaucracy to obtain his income, health care is dramatically changed. The doctor then concerns himself with following the rules, and getting the forms properly filed, and treatment is incidental to that. A dozen years ago, when I again lived in Toronto, I saw that were it not for the chart in his hands, the doctor would have no idea who the patient was.

In the care of any serious condition, treatment will take some time, and continuity of care becomes an important issue. When the doctor is reduced to processing bodies per hour, any sense of individual patients and their histories is lost.

When the patient pays nothing for service, his cries about the quality of care go unheard.

Doctors in any country must commit to years of education and more years of what amounts to an apprenticeship, before they are qualified to work on their own. For many, perhaps for most, this is acceptable only because the compensation they will later earn ensures them of a rather rich and secure life. Under a national health care system, that changes. In Canada, and in England for a longer time, the incomes of doctors have been limited by the rules established in the national health system. The only means of maximizing income is once again to maximize the number of patients seen per hour.

More important, when a ceiling is placed on the compensation a doctor may earn, then unless that ceiling is very high -- and it is not, in either Canada or England -- there is a very real economic disincentive to becoming a doctor. England has labored with this aspect for some years now, and Canada is just now beginning to appreciate the same difficulty. There is a shortage of doctors in the system, and that further degrades the care delivered, as it again forces the processing of more bodies per hour.

Casual inspection of Canada's system tends to excite people, as there are a number of statistics that make it seem very attractive:

• Reduced infant mortality
• Increased life expectancy
• Universal availability of care

The problem is, as Mark Twain said, there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Reduced infant mortality is a side effect of universal care. All pregnant women, including the indigent, are entitled to equal care, and that reduces infant mortality. However, as with our own misbegotten welfare system, it reduces the need for prospective mothers to exercise any responsibility in the decision to become pregnant.


Increased life expectancy is also directly a result of the universal coverage. Homeless rummies in the park tend not to fare well in the Great White North in the winter -- it's very cold, and they die. But with universal care, they are entitled to the same care as you or I, and this inflates the stats, giving the appearance of increased longevity, even though the reduced quality of care may have actually reduced longevity for the middle classes.


So, as with all other forms of redistribution of wealth, whether you call it welfare, or universal health care, the ultimate loser is the one paying the bill: the middle class.


In Toronto Region (county governments were folded into regions some 30 years ago), the government determined that only 4 MRI machines were needed. So sure were they of this that when an individual donated an MRI to the region, the government confiscated it. When my then girlfriend tore her ACL, and needed an MRI, she was told that she could not get one in less than several months. "Perhaps if you had a brain tumor" was what her surgeon said. But the torn ACL must be diagnosed and surgery undertaken within days, or the opportunity is lost. So once again, degraded care is what the system delivers. Of course, what he didn't say, but had been very public knowledge at the same time was that if she had been playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the MRI would have been only hours away. So much for universal coverage.


Too little is said by any with real experience of the Canadian system so adored by Hillary. And for no good reason I can determine, Newt Gingrich recently announced that Hillary knows more about health care than anyone else in the country. Utter nonsense.


Take heed. Read the articles linked above. Reality bites, and Hillary is a politician playing us for fools.