(If you’re just joining this series, feel free to read the previous installments.)
Check Your Health Care Premises (Part 3)
Over the first two articles, we’ve come to two conclusions:
- 1. Our once magnificent healthcare system is broken.
- 2. Government is the one that broke it (and, amazingly enough, is being asked by the multitude to fix it).
So, now let’s look at the solution of Universal Healthcare. Basically, this means that Americans would be taxed even more than they currently are, however, at least everyone would have coverage and access to “free*” health care.
Except that what I just said is not completely true. In fact, it’s far from true. Note the italicized word, “access” (I cover the “free*” part at the end of the article). Actually, what people will have is access to a waiting list. They will have access to having a bureaucrat who doesn’t know or love them deciding if the ill they (or their children) are suffering rates a visit to the doctor, an operation or treatment of any kind. There is nothing “conspiracy theory-ish” about this. We know it’s true because we see it regularly within those countries that already have Universal Health Care.
There is a huge difference between access to a list and access to actual health care!
In a column in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon wrote:
Simply saying that people have health insurance is meaningless. Many countries provide universal insurance but deny critical procedures to patients who need them. Britain’s Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly a million Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment. In a 2005 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote that “access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare.”
Interestingly enough, in Canada, where by law they cannot pay for private medical treatment, the only option for those who either must have an operation or die is often to travel to America.
Of course, once our system is as socialistic as is theirs, that will no longer be an option for them.
Regarding our friends and neighbors to the north, a very key point is that Canada is currently looking at massive changes in their system because, while citizens affected by the long waiting lists are in an uproar, the costs of the system are completely out of control.
Question: is this really what we want? Are we so anxious to blame a not-guilty party – The Free Enterprise System – that we will actually throw away still another freedom; the freedom to care for ourselves and our loved ones the way we see fit; not the way some faceless bureaucrat sees fit? Do we want our children getting the same expert and loving medical care as did our wounded vets at Walter Reed and similar government-run hospitals?
And, would we really rather see everyone suffer through Universal Healthcare (except the politicians and politically well-connected, of course – they’ll never have to wait on some list) instead of helping everyone by getting the market driven (and very healthy) health care system back? (Remember, we covered caring for the less fortunate in the previous article.)
In the final part of this series, we’ll look at the natural and most practical solution to our Healthcare System woes.
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*The word, “free” was in quotation marks because nothing is free; you’ll actually be paying more for your own healthcare as well as for others’. Yes, more for your own because it will be run in the typical governmental fashion of high waste, where approximately 70-75 percent out of every dollar will go to administer the system rather than to health care itself. This percentage of waste is within the norm for all government programs.
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Hi Bob,
Excellent!
I read something the other day that was interesting to me:
In one of the medical magazines I receive monthly, it stated that most doctors spend an average of 4 hours a week trying to “jump through the hoops that the government has in place, now”, AND the avergage amount of money spent by doctors each year, individually, to try to handle all the government generated red-tape is about $70,000.00 a year.
The insurance companies that follow the government’s lead are wreaking havoc on healthcare, too.
I wish we could all think about the following for a moment:
A surgeon friend of mine told me the other day that one of his patients went to the emergency room about six months ago because of severe abdominal pain. My friend has been a surgeon for thirty years, so when he “feels” that an abdominal pain is an emergency, he is right and will take them to surgery regardless of whether he has “approval” or not.
I don’t know how he “knows” these things, quickly, but he does. The patient had a mesenteric thrombosis that was cutting off the blood supply to part of the intestine. He saved the patient’s life and the patient went home in five days.
Six months later, he still has not been paid by medicare for the surgery, and he asked me, “Can you guess the reason why I will not be paid?”
He was told that it was because he did not do a colonoscopy first!
And that’s what happens when an outside agency that can not evaluate the patient’s face, heart rate, breathing, etc. decides what needs to be done.
Some doctors will have a few cases like the above, where they don’t get paid, and begin to second-guess themselves on what is the best thing to do. And do it quickly. To save a life.
My heart’s desire is that we can regain the “heart” of healthcare. From what I’ve witnessed, already, I don’t see the government putting the “heart” back into healthcare.
Anyway, I look forward to “hearing” more about what you have to “say”…Always.
Pamela
Great post, as always, my friend!!
Liberty is a genie that never goes back in the bottle.
As convoluted as our system is, if it goes the way of Universal Health Care, I predict another country will become the beacon of Capitalism or a Black Market (or Grey Market) will open up for Health Care.
I must say, I see an INCREDIBLE Exodus of Capital and Innovators from the United States!
Without a sound philosophy backing our infrastructure, there is absolutely no faith in our markets.
-D
The facts are getting in the way again Bob…..
I am just so curious as to why advocates for nationalized health care fair to address these excellent points.
It amazes me.
Thank you, everyone, for your outstandng comments. Pamela, another chiling story from someone who is and has been on the actual healthcare battlefield. Thank you. David, you’re so right; the liberty that escapes the bottle is much harder to get back in than it is to let out. We’ve seen that time and again in all sorts of liberty-based areas.
Neal. I think that one reason they fail to address the facts is that in order to respond to facts, one must be willing to dig deeper than is often comfortable or expedient in order to get and to understand those facts.These days, it’s so easy to receive information as soundbites from those who themselves do not study the history or facts of a situation but accept what… Read More they are told by their peers, and what is – for lack of a better word – the politically correct thing to believe. It’s a shame but it “is what it is.” This is why I say it’s so important to communicate the facts continually, and in a way that people will be open to hearing them instead of dismissing them. Difficult job to be sure and we are certanly fightlng an uphill battle in terms of regaining our liberty and actually helping the people in our society who most need our help.
Yes! Finally someone writes about free health care.