Author Topic: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits  (Read 2061 times)

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Christians4LessGvt

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Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
By DAVID GRATZER
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:30 PM PT

As this presidential campaign continues, the candidates' comments about health care will continue to include stories of their own experiences and anecdotes of people across the country: the uninsured woman in Ohio, the diabetic in Detroit, the overworked doctor in Orlando, to name a few.

But no one will mention Claude Castonguay perhaps not surprising because this statesman isn't an American and hasn't held office in over three decades.

Castonguay's evolving view of Canadian health care, however, should weigh heavily on how the candidates think about the issue in this country.

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec
then the largest and most affluent in the country adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form. At death's door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the U.S. Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care.

Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies ? defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain." Other provinces have followed Ontario's example.

Canada isn't the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain's system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures.

The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can't centrally plan their way to better health care.

A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards.

Declarations can't solve staffing shortages and the other rationing of care that occurs in government-run systems.

Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense."

As for the Republicans, simply criticizing Democratic health care proposals will not suffice, it's not 1994 anymore. And, while McCain's health care proposals hold promise of putting families in charge of their health care and perhaps even taming costs, McCain, at least so far, doesn't seem terribly interested in discussing health care on the campaign trail.

However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada's government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?

Gratzer is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a physician licensed in both the U.S. and Canada, where he received his medical training. His newest book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care," is now available in paperback.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299282509335931
« Last Edit: June 25, 2008, 11:31:31 PM by ChristiansUnited4LessGvt »
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Michael Tee

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2008, 12:47:50 AM »
The whole article rests on one man's opinion.  That the man authored the Quebec system (one of ten provincial systems) is of some significance, but tempered by the fact  that the system he planned has gone through a lot of changes in the intervening 40 years and the demands upon it have also changed.

Nothing in the article indicates that the system is irreparable.  Every system needs to adapt.  Some have adapted better than others.  Some need a big overhaul after years of missing small adjustments have caused problems to accumulate.  Castonguay today isn't the man he was forty years ago.  Maybe somebody else should be Quebec's Claude Castonguay for the 21st Century.  Just because Castonguay, 40 years down the road, thinks privatization is the way to go, doesn't mean that is the right way.

Quebec, like any other Province whose health-care system seems to be slowing down and becoming unresponsive, can appoint a Royal Commission to study the problem and report back.  The Commission Report would carry a lot of weight.  Claude Castonguay's opinion, at this point in time, doesn't.

The Province of Ontario has 12 and a half million people.  To write that "since spring 2006" Ontario has sent "at least" 164 patients to NY and Michigan is ludicrous - - that is 82 per year, which is 65 one-hundred-thousandths of one per cent of the population.  Ms. De Vires was refused payment because she failed to fill out a form?  These stories are highly suspicious; usually, a dumb decision like that is made at the lowest level in the bureaucracy, and rushed into print by the right-wing press, which knows that it will be overturned as it works its way through the OHIP appeals procedure through ever higher levels of the administration.  The way the refusal to pay was reported is also instructive - - a simple refusal, no indication of the decision-maker's position in the hierarchy.  If De Vires had been turned downafter two or three in-house appeals, or better yet, after exhausting all her appeals within the system, you can be sure that Investor's Business Daily would have eagerly published that fact.

You can also tell a lot by the over-use of words like "crisis" - - I won't even mention the art of the headline writer ("Lies in Ruins") which people should realize is the work of the editorial department, not the reporter.  But a crisis occurs when the system is failing to deliver on a large scale, not failing to deliver for 82 people a year out of twelve and a half million.  This is nothing but slick and opportunistic propaganda - - believe it if you want, who gives a shit?  You'll still have your 45 million without any coverage and we'll still have universal coverage and a system that works pretty well for 99% of the population, with glitches and quirks that still, even now, need to be ironed out.  Your choice.

sirs

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2008, 12:12:30 PM »
My apologies.......I missed Cu4's posting of this article 1st.  My bad
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2008, 05:11:25 PM »
Canada is a democracy. When Canadian UHC becomes as bad as you say it is, Canadians will vote it into nonexistence.

I am not considering holding my breath until that occurs.

Eighty-two dissatisfied clients out of 12.5 million is the sort of thing that any large corporation can only dream of.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

kimba1

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2008, 06:13:25 PM »
When Canadian UHC becomes as bad as you say it is, Canadians will vote it into nonexistence.


no no no no no no no

once any place gets a taste of UHC it`ll never be voluntarily remove
you`ve (with respect) how having UHC effect a people`s thought on health.
it`s a right not too different to owning guns
you`ll miss it if somebody tries removes it.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2008, 07:15:08 PM »
That is my point. No matter how much the right wing pisses and moans, bitches and stews, the citizens always seem to prefer it to whatever rinky-dink or mickey-mouse for-profit affair guys like sirs might contrive to replace it.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Michael Tee

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #6 on: June 26, 2008, 07:26:10 PM »
It's easy to scare Americans with fear of the unknown.  Once they've seen the system in action, as opposed to hearing horror stories from the MSM bullshit machine about it, they'll never allow any politician to remove it.  But they WILL allow politicians to sabotage it under the guise of "improving" or "reforming" it - - THAT is a never-ending battle.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #7 on: June 26, 2008, 07:30:05 PM »
But they WILL allow politicians to sabotage it under the guise of "improving" or "reforming" it - - THAT is a never-ending battle.

It is to the credit of the American people, the AARP and the Democrats that Juniorbush's war on Social Security was so soundly sent a-spinning smoking and burning into a well-deserved crash landing.

Lamentably, the vile sumbitch is still spending the money I put into Social Security on his dumbassed war.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Michael Tee

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2008, 07:41:00 PM »
<<Lamentably, the vile sumbitch is still spending the money I put into Social Security on his dumbassed war.>>

Bush is Bush.  The people I'D be blaming are the Democrats.  They run on anti-war rhetoric, but when they get in it's the same-ole-same-ole.

Plane

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2008, 12:24:58 AM »
But they WILL allow politicians to sabotage it under the guise of "improving" or "reforming" it - - THAT is a never-ending battle.

It is to the credit of the American people, the AARP and the Democrats that Juniorbush's war on Social Security was so soundly sent a-spinning smoking and burning into a well-deserved crash landing.

Lamentably, the vile sumbitch is still spending the money I put into Social Security on his dumbassed war.

What Bushwas trying to do would not have been enough, but nothing is not better.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2008, 05:22:39 PM »
What Bushwas trying to do would not have been enough, but nothing is not better.

What Juniorbush was trying to do would have destroyed SS forever, and rewarded Wall Street. It also would have decreased earnings for everyone except the super rich. It was much worse than doing nothing. And his ploy was rightfully totally rejected.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2008, 08:46:03 PM »
What Bushwas trying to do would not have been enough, but nothing is not better.

What Juniorbush was trying to do would have destroyed SS forever, and rewarded Wall Street. It also would have decreased earnings for everyone except the super rich. It was much worse than doing nothing. And his ploy was rightfully totally rejected.



How exactly?
I thought it half hearted , an attempt to put a small amount of the SS recipts out of the reach of congress.

sirs

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2008, 10:12:42 PM »
A mere fraction of what is needed to FIX SS, and prevent it from finacially imploding.  Left's solution apparently......let it collapse, then blame Bush and the Iraqi strawman.
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2008, 01:06:47 PM »
When we have an operational majority in the Congress and control of the White House, then you will see the left's actual solution to Social Security. Until then, there will be only proposals that are filibustered, amended to death, or vetoed.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2008, 09:35:17 PM »
When we have an operational majority in the Congress and control of the White House, then you will see the left's actual solution to Social Security. Until then, there will be only proposals that are filibustered, amended to death, or vetoed.



That is the most frank admission I have ever seen.


With this level of obstructionism Democrats and leftists will have to accept a lot of responsibility for the collapse of Social Security if it fails before there is a liberal majority.