While President Obama flew to foreign lands to lobby for Chicago’s Olympic bid, a group of Americans trekked to Canada to find out about government-run health care.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute in Colorado, visited Vancouver, British Columbia, to host a conference that explored Canada’s medical system. Caldara’s foray north was written about in the Washington Times, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed some of the same Canadians.
Caldara’s interest in the subject is personal as well as civic-minded. He has a 5‑year-old son who has undergone eight operations, including heart surgery. From what Caldara can tell, his son would have received little or none of this treatment in Canada. There, instead, he would have been put on waiting lists.
Caldara heard stories from Canadians who had been shuffled from one specialist to another, each requiring long waits before even being seen. Actual treatment? More waiting.
Outside the system, entrepreneurs have sprung up to broker deals with private physicians to the south, in the U.S., and even with growing quasi-illegal clinics in Canada.
Meanwhile, in our little haven for sick Canadians, American politicians still talk about reforms that would ruin it for the Canadians — as well as for us. Some even prefer the Canadian system to what we have now.
Jon Caldara doesn’t think this makes sense. Neither do I.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “The Canadian Treatment”
Back of the envelope calculation based on the Canadian Health Care system statistics: the cost of health care with the public option would cost a minimum of $1.6 trillion each year but would most likely cost $3.2 – 3.8 trillion per year. In additional 160,000 Americans would die each year that could have been treated under the current system and 18000 Canadians would lose their lives as well.
Ah yes, once again, our ‘betters’ want to create a system to ‘save us.’ Not really sure what they want to save us from, but there they are front & center ready to control, dictate, regulate, and yes eventually, to ration. Wanna bet that any of those seeking to run the show will ever wait in line & even then be refused treatments???
As soon as the powers to be in Washington said they wanted to enact “comprehensive’ health care reform, I knew we were in for it. The code word among the leftist elitists is “comprehensive.” It means, THEY will run the show, enjoy the benefits & any profits, & we the unwashed masses will pay through the nose & w/ health care, w/ our very lives.
What they propose is NOT reform, it is recreation of health care delivery. Reform would provide actual real competition by allowing all 1,300 existing health care insurers to compete across the entire nation. Our elitists want ONE government option to promote competition. Yeah, right!
Health care costs are rising not because the products or services costs are rising, but because government regulations at the state & federal levels have so complicated & corrupted the system that delivery of anything under their ‘guidance’ is remarkable.
Reform would allow cross state line marketing of insurance & tax portability so we could take our insurance w/ us rather than depend on an employer. It would also throttle the ability of trial lawyers to extort billions in lawsuits that depend on possible outcomes rather than probable outcomes. No tort reform means they system will be even more corrupt. Worse is that under the government system, even the trial lawyers will lose since no one can sue the government.
How many professions or businesses will these people be able to criminalize & vilify before folks realize they are making all of us the criminals as ‘they’ reap the profits & benefits?
I may have said this before. I was born and raised in England, under the National Health System. My mother had a toe problem, it seems that somehow she had broken or injured her little toe, and she had been waiting for about 4 years to get it taken care of, granted she was in her 80’s when that happened, but she could hardly walk when I saw her in ’97. At the age of 93 she fell and broke her hip, finally some medical care, they fixed the hip but not the toe, unfortunately she died after the hip surgery. That is what they call “Normal care” in UK, and it is being advocated here? I think the whole Government has been smoking that funny stuff. I we have to have NHS then they should too. After all arn’t we all “Created equal”??????????
Sueproir thinking demonstrated above. Thanks!