Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The joys of government health care

The Mackinac Center peeks north of the border to see just how single-payer health care is working out, and gets an earful from the folks who have to deal with the Canadian government's idea of good medicine.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous alan said...

And we don't have waiting periods?
We don't have medical vacations?
We don't have specialists who may not be everywhere?

I am a nurse, married to a provider. My wife has patients scheduled out 3 weeks and sometimes more, as do her colleagues.

My wife and I vacationed in Vancouver BC to get her Lasik surgery; it wasn't available here in the United States.

Often women and men must wear incontinence diapers because of health care failures and oddly, successes. We have death panels in the form of insurance companies that ration care, and deny care to those who need it.

But we do share something else: Those who pay more get better care.

This bit sounds like insurance industry propaganda.

October 31, 2009 9:34 PM  
Blogger J.D. Tuccille said...

No, we don't have legally mandated, centrally maintained waiting lists in the United States. I'm sure your wife is booked out for weeks -- so is my wife (a pediatrician). But that's her office, on a list she maintains and which she tweaks at will -- not a waiting list maintained by the government, controlling access to a specialty across a political subdivision. And waiting lists in the U.S. don't begin to compare to those in Canada where there are even waits of years to simply be allowed to be listed as a patient of a primary care physician.

You couldn't find Lasik in the U.S.? Really? Well, I can't speak to your experience, but Arizona is full of competing eye doctors and Lasik clinics offering the service at reasonable rates. Next time you need the procedure, schedule a little golf in Scottsdale while you're at it.

You accuse me of writing propaganda. Let me return the favor by pointing out that you're peddling nonsense.

November 7, 2009 11:29 AM  

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