ADOPTING CANADIAN-STYLE HEALTH CARE WOULD BE FOLLY
-Jeff Jacoby

"The American health care system is not perfect, but adopting a
single-payer system like Canada's would come with significant costs,
says Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe.

Moreover, the "idealism" of national health insurance <like
the "idealism" of socialism in general...> has not been able to
succeed in the real world....

<.... since there's nothing "ideal", "practical", "just" or "moral"
about chaining the needs of the non-productive to the abilities,
motivation and property of the productive, or violating the rights of
some to distribute unearned goods, services and rewards to others...>>

Since every citizen is "guaranteed" the right to health care,
national health care systems must ration its availability to control
costs, explains Jacoby.

In ''Lives at Risk,'' a book published last summer by the National
Center for Policy Analysis, NCPA president John Goodman and two
coauthors, Gerald Musgrave and Devon Herrick, showed that a single-
payer system, far from proving a panacea, would make American health
care much worse than it is:

o About 25 percent of patients undergoing elective surgery in
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and around 36 percent in
Britain, have to wait more than four months; in the United
States that figure is 5 percent.

o The average Canadian patient waited 8.3 weeks for an
appointment with a specialist in 2003, and another 9.5 weeks before
getting treated.

o Lengthy waits have resulted in unnecessary deaths: in Britain,
for example, delays for colon cancer treatment are so protracted
that 20 percent of cases considered curable at the time of
diagnosis are incurable by the time of treatment.

"Wherever single-payer health care systems have been tried," writes
Goodman, ''rationing by waiting is pervasive, putting patients at
risk and keeping them in pain.''

Ultimately, socialized medicine guarantees only the right to stand in
line often and to get sicker while you wait, says Jacoby.

Source: Jeff Jacoby, "National Health Insurance: The Wrong Rx,"
Boston Globe, March 22, 2005; and John Goodman, Devon Herrick and
Gerald Musgrave, "Lives At Risk," National Center for Policy
Analysis, July 2001.

For text (subscription required):

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/
03/22/national_health_insurance_the_wrong_rx/

For more on Moving Toward Universal Coverage:
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/hea/