Shouldn't It Be Every Citizen's Right To Be On A 2 Year Waiting List

Canadian health wellfare coming apart at the seems.

A cynic might characterize Canada’s medicare system as the universal, free, democratic and egalitarian access to a two-year waiting list. You jump the queue only if you have the bucks and the referral to jump over the 49th, unless a life-threatening emergency sends you to the OR. America’s health care system, on the other hand is discriminatory and expensive, but it offers immediate access to the best medical treatment in the world.

In both cases timely care for everyone is an elusive goal.

In any event Michael Moore’s take on Canada is superficial, euphoric and unrealistic. New technology, abuse and the insatiable demands of an ever expanding clientele of elderly relatives sponsored by Third World immigrants is breaking the bank. It has been calculated that each sponsored immigrant in that age group will cost the Australian medical system $250,000. Since roughly 75% of Canadian immigrants and refugees, drawn from largely “non-traditional” sources, in fact consist of their unskilled dependent children, a terrifying portrait of the toll that Canadian immigration policy is taking on medicare could no doubt be drawn.

A recent article featured in the London Free Press (Thursday, March 13, 2008 “Hospitals forecast deficits”) recognized population growth as one principal reason why the Canadian health system was on the brink of deficit financing, with half of Ontario’s hospitals facing service cuts to meet the legal requirement for a balanced budget. Seventy percent of Canada’s population growth is driven by immigration.

It was economist Milton Friedman who commented a decade ago that “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” As Robert Rector explained, to be properly understood, Friedman’s observation should be viewed as applicable to the entire redistributive system of benefits, subsidies and services that lower income groups disproportionately enjoy at the expense of higher income groups.

Unfortunately, this superstructure of benefits and services rests not only on an economic foundation but a cultural one as well. A people that is very much alike is more inclined to trust one another, and this trust translates into a willingness to vote for redistributive policies. But we are no longer a mostly ethnically homogeneous society with a shared respect for institutions and a shared sense of civic obligation. When a significant portion of the population is from another hemisphere, another culture or even another generation with different values, the welfare state is perceived as an unlocked candy store with services to be exploited to the maximum.

Redistributive policies like medicare are inversely correlated to cultural diversity. Rather than confront this reality, Canadian leftists demand yet more financial IV injections into the morbid body of the health care system. They refuse to acknowledge that even the Swedish Social Democrats, their role models, were forced to discover the “Laffer curve”. That is, push the tax rate up beyond a certain level and tax revenues fall in response. Tax payers will not keep working and producing if they can’t keep enough of their income. There are limits to what can be funded.

The Canadian model is not sustainable. It works only if there is enough public money to fund it and not enough patients with doctors to help them abuse it.

Those days are gone forever.

A Toast. To The Acompishments Of Socialized Medicine

Thought this article quite interesting reflecting just how far down an industry can sink after it is Nationalized. Of particular interest to me are the "Grubby Drunken Nurses" and the lack of hand washing in a hospital.

Tory peer vindicated after Norovirus shuts three wards at 'grubby' hospital he attacked

By OLINKA KOSTER - More by this author » Last updated at 21:38pm on 11th March 2008

Comments

Lord Mancroft: The peer, who says he is lucky to have left the Royal United hospital alive, feels he might have 'lifted the lid on something'

When a Tory peer launched a stinging attack on the "grubby and drunken" nurses he encountered in the NHS, the hospital employing them defended them to the hilt.

It demanded evidence of Lord Mancroft's damning allegations and still says it has found not a shred of truth in his complaints.

But yesterday it had to defend its standards once more as it dealt with its third disease outbreak in five months.

Another bout of the norovirus - the winter vomiting bug - has forced three wards to close at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

Last November, the bug forced two wards to close, and a second bout last month shut nine wards.

The highly infectious virus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting, spreads through closed communities rapidly if patients and staff fail to wash their hands.

Last month, Lord Mancroft, the 50-year-old vice-chairman of the Countryside Alliance, spoke of how appalled he had been by the "filthy" state of the wards at the Royal United, during his treatment there for gastroenteritis.

Scroll down for more...

Virus alert: The Royal United Hospital in Bath has been forced to close three wards as it has been hit by its third norovirus outbreak in five months

He said he was dismayed at the heartless attitude of "lazy and promiscuous" staff and that apart from "one or two wonderful ones" the nurses were "mostly grubby with dirty fingernails and hair".

In a Lords debate on patient care, he said: "It is a miracle that I am still alive. The wards are filthy.

"The wards, the tables, the beds and the bathrooms were not cleaned."

The peer, who hunts with Prince Charles, said a splash of blood in the bathroom and a piece of dirty cotton wool under a neighbouring bed were there for the entire seven days he was in hospital.

The Royal United said staff were left "extremely distressed and upset" by the peer's account, in which he said he heard a nurse say: "I really shouldn't be here because I had so much to drink last night and I feel like I'm going to be sick."

The Royal United is one of at least 40 hospital trusts to be hit by the norovirus this year.

Relatives ringing the hospital or visiting its website have been told that visiting is banned unless strictly necessary, and reminded to wash their hands at all times.

Last night, a spokesman for the hospital, Helen Robinson-Gordon, said: "Norovirus is extremely prevalent in the community at the moment and other hospitals have been affected by it.

"Of course it is linked to hygiene and cleanliness in that we should all have clean hands at all times but it is coming into the hospital from the community.

"Because it is so highly infectious, once it is here it passes from person to person very easily.

"We recently had two spot checks at the hospital for cleanliness and passed both with flying colours.

"We still have no factual basis for Lord Mancroft's evidence whatsoever. We have asked him for a meeting which he has agreed to but we are still awaiting a date from him."

Lord Mancroft said last night: "I am not the person to comment on this because I am the amateur - it is up to them to sort themselves out.

"But I can say that subsequent to speaking out I have had the biggest postbag I have ever had since I have been in the House of Lords.

"Quite a lot of those letters are relating similar stories in the same hospital. Some relate to other hospitals.

"I suspect I have inadvertently uncovered or lifted the lid on something."

Health Care Cons

Below is an excellent article on the down side of socialized medicine from an economists point of view.


by Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the editor of The Freeman and "In brief," and a contributor to The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. TGIF appears Fridays. Comments welcome.

The economist Joan Robinson (1903-1983) wrote, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians; they are the far greater threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When you consider that the typical political campaign is little more than a series of confidence games, understanding basic economics is a matter of survival. Without such an understanding one is an easy mark.

Case in point: How would one see through the flimflam served up as health-care policy without a working knowledge of economic principles? When politicians promise "universal and affordable" medical care and insurance, how else are we to know that those promises can't be kept. Indeed, attempting to keep them would gravely damage our medical care (even more), our prosperity, our liberty.

What we call medical care/insurance is a bundle of goods and services that have to be produced. They aren't found superabundant in nature. Production of those things entails real opportunity costs in terms of resources (labor, intellectual capital, machinery, and more, which could be used in alternative ways. The people engaged in this production are (so far) free to do other things if they choose. They can't be compelled to practice medicine, run hospitals, invent medicines, or offer insurance policies. This sobering thought should be kept in mind when analyzing politicians' plans for medical "reform." Any proposal that would drive medical service providers and resources into other lines of work could hardly be said to be in the general interest.

However, one group can be compelled to participate in a government plan: the American people in their dual capacities as taxpayers and consumers of medical services. This is the key to any political "solution." That's why Hillary Clinton insists against Barack Obama that any program must be mandatory. Given the premises both candidates share, Clinton has logic on her side. Without compulsion, any government program must fail even on its own terms. You might think that's a good argument against government programs, but politicians and most other people don't believe physical force perpetrated by government is objectionable. Go figure.

Cost-Shifting

Candidates who promise universal and affordable medical care don't really believe they can lower the true costs of the relevant goods and services. Instead, their plans contain methods, overt and covert, to shift some people's expenses to others. The overall price tag won't shrink -- indeed, it can be expected to grow -- but the money price to selected individuals would diminish. (Non monetary costs, such as waiting times, would increase.)

The problem for those who promise universal and affordable health care is that medically we are not all created equal. Because of genetics and lifestyle, some people are more likely to get sick than others, and some people are already sick. This upsets the politicians' plans, and they must do something about it. Clinton declares, "I want to stop the health-insurance companies from discriminating against people because they're sick."

One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at a statement like that. Is it ignorance, stupidity, or demagoguery? Real insurance lets people hedge against financial ruin by pooling their risk of misfortune with others. For reasons that shouldn't need explaining, people who present a low risk for whatever is being insured against would reasonably be charged less for coverage than people who present a high risk. For one thing, low-risk customers would be unwilling to pay premiums that overstated their perceived risk. I recall reading that the first fire-insurance company, founded by Benjamin Franklin, set premiums according to how fire-resistant a building was. Was that a reasonable or outrageous thing to do?

The depth of the lack of understanding about insurance is on stark display whenever someone demands that the terms of coverage for a sick person be the same as those for a healthy person. Risk grows out of uncertainty. But if someone is already sick, there is no uncertainty about his need for medical care. "Insurance" in this case would not be real insurance but rather a subsidy provided by others or prepayment for future expenses.

To be actuarially sound, insurance must discriminate on the basis of risk. If the government bars insurers from such price-discrimination, they really wouldn't be in the insurance business at all. It would be more accurate to call their activity a forced subsidy. We should at least call a thing what it is.

Nondiscrimination Principle

Where would the Clinton principle of nondiscrimination lead if the government seriously enforced it? If an "insurer" is allowed to charge only one price regardless of risk, it would have to set the price high in order to be able to cover the riskiest customers. But that would not honor the politicians' promise of affordable coverage. Moreover, young, healthy people would opt out, preferring to spend their money otherwise or to save it in order to self-insure. So the government could not let this stand. To "fix" things, it would compel everyone to participate and force the taxpayers to subsidize low-income people.

Even with subsidies the politicians wouldn't let insurers charge market prices for long because this would anger voters and break the budget. So inevitably, the Clinton principle must lead to price controls.

We know what price ceilings bring: shortages. Why would a company that cannot charge enough to cover its costs and earn a competitive profit continue in business? Thus the principle of nondiscrimination combined with price controls would inevitably dry up the supply of private "insurance." At that point, the politicians would declare that the "free market" failed and that government must step in to be the sole health insurer. Then government could have full control over who gets what kind of medical attention. It would be in the triage business, a terrifying prospect for sure. It would also dictate prices to doctors, hospitals, and drug companies, speeding up the exodus from that profession and those industries. As supply withered and demand inflated (because of the illusion of low prices), government would impose more and more draconian controls.

There's a lesson here. When the government seeks to enforce a counterfeit right -- such as the "right" to medical care -- no expansion of freedom results. Instead, government power expands -- to every one's detriment.

One way for politicians really to keep their promise of lower medical costs would be to uncover all the ways the government artificially raises costs today. It does this in a variety of ways: restricting supply through licensing, boosting demand by lowering the apparent price of services, promoting third-party payment for even expected routine services, raising drug-research expenses, imposing coverage mandates on insurers, forbidding interstate competition in insurance, and on and on.

But politicians don't talk about those things. They presumably wouldn't get credit merely for repealing destructive interventions and letting the competitive free market provide universal affordable medical care -- as it has provided so many other things universally and affordably.

In fact, the politicians love those interventions. So they promise to lower medical costs through direct controls. Even a modest familiarity with how markets work reveals that this would make things worse. Is it too late for Americans to see through the con game?