Two Women shows that when
governments determine health
care priorities, some people suffer
truly unfortunate consequences.
Watch It Now!
Indoctrinate U, reveals the
ugly truths about academia that
you won't see in their glossy
admissions brochures.
Watch The Trailer!
In A Short Course in Brain
Surgery, filmmaker Stuart
Browning shows the callousness
of "single-payer", government
-run health care systems. Watch It Now!
Our short film El Uno De Mayo,
casts a light on the left-wing
totalitarian groups behind the
recent May Day marches. Watch It Now!
Think Canada's government-run
health care system is a model for
the U.S.? Think again!
Dead Meat is a searing cine-
matic examination of socialized
medicine. Watch It Now!
One of the linchpin arguments of government-run health care advocates is that the government can run an insurance program more efficiently and with much lower administrative costs than the private sector. According to them, Medicare overhead is approximately 3% while private insurers have 12% (or 20% or 31% depending on who is talking) in administrative costs.
The argument is complete rubbish.
Put aside the fact that since private insurance companies have to earn a profit for their shareholders, they must also root out fraud. Medicare and Medicaid - which are rife with fraud to the tune of billions of dollars - do not because they rely on a bottomless pit of taxpayer money.
Put aside the fact that private insurers need to collect premiums while the government collects its premiums through the IRS whose administrative costs are nowhere to be found in the so-called Medicare overhead number.
The reason that the Medicare overhead number appears so low is that it is computed as a percentage of total health care costs. Since Medicare covers people over 65 whose costs are much higher than the under-65 population, the admin costs appear lower - but they are not. This is nothing more than lying with statistics.
It seems that the advocates of government-run healthcare didn't learn anything from the history of the 20th century. Almost 20 years since the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of world communism, the American left still seems to think that government should run businesses and that profit should be outlawed. There's absolutely nothing different about health care from any other important good or service that the market provides.
Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute addresses the issue of health care "reform" in a new column:
Government intervention in medicine is wrecking American health care. Nearly half of all spending on health care in America is already government spending. Yet President Obama's "reforms" will only expand that intervention.
Prior to the government's entrance into medicine, health care was regarded as a product to be traded voluntarily on a free market - no different from food, clothing, or any other important good or service. Medical providers competed to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible prices. Virtually all Americans could afford basic health care, while those few who could not were able to rely on abundant private charity.
Had this freedom been allowed to endure, Americans' rising productivity would have afforded them better and better health care, just as, today, we buy better and more varied food and clothing than people did a century ago. There would be no crisis of affordability, as there isn't for food or clothing.
This video speaks for itself - and shows that Obama's various defenses of the public insurance option are more of the same: obfuscation and propaganda.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times is one of the most mendacious commentators on health care in the mainstream media. See my essay The Health Care Lies of Paul Krugman - and this entertaining video. Enjoy!
Having government-provided health insurance doesn't do a lot of good when the health care is delivered by apathetic, uncaring, unionized, government health workers.
Consider this story (July 5, 2009) in the UK's Telegraph newspaper:
Cancer patient Pamela Goddard battled against cancer for 50 years before she died of an infected bedsore during a stay in hospital.
...
The cancer did not kill her, but a bedsore did.
What appeared to be the start of one was noted on her back as she was admitted for radiation treatment in September and it was allowed to gradually develop into a "raging sore" which left Mrs Goddard moaning in pain.
During four weeks of what her family describe as "torture" in a bed in East Surrey Hospital, the sore resulted in a fatal blood infection and she died on October 27.
Her son Adrian Goddard, who lives in the US, said: "She survived cancer for 40 years, then died from a bedsore.
"It is just beyond belief that they could let a bedsore develop to the point where it actually kills someone from septicaemia."He said the nurses seemed largely unconcerned by the growing size of the sore and his mother's increasing pain."
The bedsore was painful. There were various procedures that should have been done. You are supposed to debride the thing, clean it, treat it."
She was supposed to be lifted and moved so there's not constant pressure on it," Mr Goddard said."There were explanations like 'there was only one nurse and it wasn't possible to do it or the equipment was broken'... just a series of excuses.
Of course, the Obama administration denies that UK socialist-style health care cost containment is on the horizon. They prefer the approach of having government pay for health care while hospitals and doctors remain nominally private. However, the Obama approach is like that taken in Canada where stories of hospital neglect - just like in the UK - are reported with great regularity.
A new video produced by the National Center for Policy Analysis features Canadian medical broker Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives who has appeared in several of our health care films. This piece serves as a warning from someone who sees suffering and waiting Canadians on a daily basis.
To sign the "Free Our Health Care Now!" petition, visit their website.
The Independence Institute in Colorado has just produced a good video explaining how individual mandates have worked in Massachusetts with the following introduction:
We all agree the health care system is in need of reform. That's not the issue. The debate is really what kind of reform is needed. There are those rooting for nationalizing health care - Obama Care. What's that you ask? Obama's idea of reform is a government takeover of the health care system. One of the most popular forms of government takeover is the "Massachusetts Model." Those of us opposing "reform" that involves yet more government interference, wish to see a system that incorporates more consumer choice and more competition. Take a minute to watch this new video outlining just one of the many reasons the Massachusetts model has failed.
If you think that government-run medicine will solve the problems in our health care system, listen to this sobering testimonial on socialized medicine in the UK:
The National Center for Policy Analysis, The Mike Gallagher Show and the Salem Radio Network have authored the "Free Our Health Care Now!" online petition. They hope to deliver hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures to Congress to stop ObamaCare in its tracks.
I always like to hear the reasoned arguments of our adversaries (see email below). I especially like his analysis of how costs are held down in the UK and Canada via "preventive medicine". I think what he means is that all those colonoscopies that the NHS prevents Brits from getting greatly lower their colorectal cancer outcomes - thus saving the system lots of money via the premature death of patients.
From: byron19119@yahoo.com
Subject: Ha Ha!
Date: May 12, 2009 12:51:10 PM EDT
To: stuartbrowning@onthefencefilms.com
If you weren't so stupid and so godamm funny I would actually be upset about your lies and stupidity concerning single payer health insurance. I never heard of any of your "films", but I'm sure they're as equally funny and misguided. Let's see - whose opionion should I trust? - a nobel prize winning econimist PhD from Princeton or a hack nobody? Tough choice. As for Canadian healthcare or British healthcare for that matter, the main focus is on preventative medicine. That's why the costs are so low. People in this country who are uninsured wait until the last minute to receive help, so costs ultimately skyrocket.
Aetna (one grand cocksucking "health" insurance swindler) actually requires a renal patient to pay a 50.00 co-pay out of pocket for each dialysis treatment. They also mandate that ALL renal patients need only three treatments a week. In Britain, if your doctor stipulates 5 treatments - you get 5 treatments - no copay. By the by, if you can't afford the co-pay I know of many patients who apply for Medicare. So big, bad government actually subsidizes these multi-billion dollar industries. Does this make sense to you, you fucking moron? Socialized Medicine Now!
More government bureaucrats involved in your healthcare would be destructive. Other countries with similar systems face lengthy and often deadly waiting lists. That is the only way to ration unlimited demand in the face of static supply. Go to YouTube and view the short films of Stuart Browning for a flavor of the Canadian system.
On Friday, I appeared on Canadian national television in a story about the popularity of my video "A Short Course In Brain Surgery" and its contribution to the health care debate. The video (of which there are at least three copies on YouTube) has been viewed over 2 million times. Click the thumbnail to play.
The Perils of Public Health Care (CBC, Feb 22 2008)
A Short Course In Brain Surgery - my short movie which tells the story of Lindsay McCreith, a Canadian with a cancerous brain tumor who had to come to the U.S. to receive timely medical care - has now been viewed over 500,000 times on YouTube.
Not bad for a piece about health care policy.
As this nation barrels head-long towards government-controlled "universal healthcare", I hope that many more people are able to view the movie - and draw the appropriate conclusion.
Jamie Court of Santa Monica, California's "Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights" has a frustrating editorial in today's L.A. Times.
He asks "Is it the right of the government to impose an obligation to buy a private product that costs $12,000 a year for a family of four?" and concludes:
mandatory private insurance on this scale will not work. Mandatory auto insurance, which has been in force in California for more than two decades, has failed miserably. That's why a portion of our auto insurance premiums today go to pay for "uninsured motorist" coverage.
One in seven drivers has no auto insurance, compared to one in five without health insurance under a nonmandatory system.
I think Mr. Court is right about this. Forcing people to buy what they do not want or cannot afford is nothing but a confiscatory tax that limits people's freedom to spend their own money and control their own lives. And, there will be massive non-compliance.
Mr. Court's "solution" to the problem, however, is totally off-base. He says:
Californians are ready for market reforms to make health insurance more available and affordable, including forcing insurers to price policies fairly and preventing them from denying coverage to less healthy patients. Sacramento legislators should make the system fairer, regulate healthcare costs, then expand subsidies for low-income families. They should fix the broken market, not foist it on the public.
What a mistake! How is government regulation of insurance pricing, "forced issue" mandates and regulation of healthcare costs a "market reform"? More government control is a prescription for socialized medicine, which will work just as well as the grand Socialist "experiments" in the USSR, North Korea, East Germany and communist China.
Why, oh why, don't more people realize that government already mucks around in the not very "free market" for healthcare too much? Why don't people realize that every time government mandates or regulates something, it prevents the market from offering value and options?
When government mandates force sober homosexual men to buy health insurance policies that cover pregnancy expenses, infertility treatments and drug and alcohol in-patient care, premiums for these patients cost much more than necessary. When government regulation prohibits health insurers from offering plans across state-lines, there is less competition in each state and prices are higher than they would be in a true open market.
It's simple economics, folks! Won't someone PLEASE take a refresher course in Economics 101 . . . and pay attention during class?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Contact:
Jon Caldara, president, 303-279-6536 or jon@i2i.org
Amy Oliver, operations director, 970-371-3413 or amy@i2i.org
Think tank hosts independent film maker and free market health care advocate Stuart Browning for the Colorado premiere of Free Market Cure
GOLDEN, Colo - The Independence Institute is proud to announce that it will be hosting the Colorado premiere of Free Market Cure, a series of short films that honestly depicts the dangers of socialized medicine. Independent film maker and producer of Free Market Cure Stuart Browning will be our guest of honor.
According to Browning, those on the left including Hollywood and many politicians "are gearing up to bring socialized medicine to the U.S. under the guise of 'universal healthcare.' Americans should be aware, however, that government-run health care means high taxes, medical rationing - and waiting lists to see specialists, get diagnostic tests and to receive surgery."
Free Market Cure is designed to counter Michael Moore's Sicko, which Browning called "a large dose of misinformation and propaganda."
The premiere will be on Wednesday, September 19, at the Shwayder in the Mizel Center for Culture and Arts at 350 S. Dahlia Street in Denver. The movies and Browning's commentary will begin at 7 p.m. and will be followed by coffee and dessert. The event is free and open to the public but seating is limited so reservations are requested. Please contact Kay at 303-279-6536 or kay@i2i.org.
"Anyone who is even remotely concerned about the direction in which medical care in Colorado is headed must see Free Market Cure," said President Jon Caldara.
Caldara issued a personal invitation to all of Colorado's 208 commission members. "I understand that members were invited to hear Donna Smith who was featured in Sicko. I invite all of them to hear another perspective." he added.
Visit the Independence Institute Web site for more information.
The Independence Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit public policy research organization based in Golden, Colo.
A recent study says that the federal government has been restocking mountain streams in Colorado with the wrong species of an endangered trout for more than 20 years! President Bush's approval ratings are in the twenty-percent range. Approval ratings for Congress are wallowing in the teens.
But, hey, let's give the federal government complete control over our healthcare system.
Am I the only lunatic who thinks this kind of logic stinks like old fish on a hot summer day?
Canada, once considered the bedrock of national health care systems, is in the beginning stages of change toward free-market health insurance.
[...]
For the first time, private health care clinics are proliferating throughout Canada and arguments for allowing private physicians to practice freely are being heard.
"You are seeing the Medicare orthodoxy of the last 30 years being questioned in Canada," said Dr. David Gratzer, a registered physician in Canada and the U.S., and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank. "Over the last two years, the health care system has dramatically changed to allow more private health care."
The Supreme Court of Canada, widely viewed as among the most liberal in the world, nearly two years ago allowed a man in Quebec to buy health care on his own - striking down 30 years of precedent and giving advocates for private health care a major victory.
The case is known as the Chaoulli decision, after Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, who took action against the system after a patient was forced to wait nearly one year for a hip replacement.
If Moore's film channels the prevailing left-wing wisdom about the alleged glories of government-run healthcare, Browning's work represents a much-needed corrective: a skepticism about government's ability to provide efficient coverage and a confidence that the free-market is a better compass for change than a Hollywood ideologue. "I can't imagine anything more crucial than the right to make life-or-death decisions, the right to privacy, the right to choose one's own doctor. And all these things are at stake," said Browning in a recent interview from his Florida office.
Rather than quibbling with Michael Moore's omission of Cuba's position relative to the U.S. on a World Health Organization (WHO) international health care system ranking report, CNN should have called into question the use of that biased report itself.
The WHO report doesn't just rank health care systems according to how well they cure you when you're sick. Indeed, 25% of the WHO report's scoring is based on the "fairness" of a country's health care financing as measured by how redistributionist - socialist - it is.
The result is an absurd report that ranks the medical system of Morocco as superior to that the U.S. But it's good enough for Michael Moore!
Last night I appeared on the FOX News channel show "Hannity's America" discussing my films, Michael Moore's Sicko and the threat of collectivized medicine.
The only video to show up on the web so far is from an anti-FOX wingnut site who have edited the video with some inane commentary at the end - as well as this little jewel on their web site:
As for Stuart Browning ... According to one website, he has connections to some conservative (and possibly CIA or governmental) sources of money ...
For the advocates of government-run medicine who actually believe the United Nation's claim that the U.S. health care system is inferior to that of Morocco(!), it's not a big leap to assume that the CIA funds filmmakers like me to debunk socialized medicine.
Michael Moore isn't the only advocate of government-run medicine to use deception and lies to further the cause. Paul Krugman at the New York Times, in a column earlier this week, defends the Canadian system with all the deceit he can muster:
Yes, Canadians wait longer than insured Americans for elective surgery. But over all, the average Canadian's access to health care is as good as that of the average insured American ...
Krugman wants his readers to think that by "elective", he means things like hip replacements and cataract operations - when, in fact, "elective" surgery in Canada includes all cancer surgery and coronary artery bypass surgeries.
David Hogberg has an excellent article this morning over at The American Spectator explaining why the health insurance market doesn't work the way that other markets do. The answer? One word ... government.
By now it is no secret that Moore's new documentary Sicko shows health insurance companies finding all sorts of insidious ways to avoid paying for treatment. On the surface, it makes sense to blame this on the profit motive. Paying for sick people is often expensive and finding ways to deny them care is good for the bottom line. The health insurance company that utilizes the most innovative methods to avoid paying for care will be rewarded with the highest profit margin.
Yet such thinking overlooks a rather obvious question: How do health insurance companies attract customers if they treat some of their customers so badly? A company can't make any profit if no one is willing to buy its product or service. Sure, a company may be able to make a profit for a while by fooling customers into buying its shoddy products or services. But eventually customers wise up. Word that the company is bad spreads, and customers takes their business elsewhere. If the market for health insurance worked properly, then companies that deny paying for care on the flimsiest of reasons would risk getting a bad reputation and seeing their customers go to companies that do not engage in such practices. So why doesn't this happen?
The answer is that thanks to government policy the health insurance market doesn't work properly.
This site, and its new companion website Free Market Cure, feature short movies - made for the internet - which explore the U.S. health care system as well as the true nature of government rationing of health care as practiced in Canada's single-payer system.
The movement towards "universal health care" or "single-payer health care" represents government control over the standards and availability of medical care. Everywhere that these systems have been tried, the results have been the same: shortages and rationing. We feel a better way to control costs is for consumers to be responsible for - and in control of - their own health care spending.
I hope that you will find these short films and commentary a welcome antidote to the blatantly false propaganda offered in Michael Moore's film Sicko.
Update: We'll be putting our short film "Dead Meat" up on YouTube as we have maxed out our video server bandwidth limits due to heavy traffic. We plan to have it up soon. In the meantime, check out all of our short films dealing with health care at our companion site Free Market Cure.
Here's left-wing healthcare pundit Ezra Klein in an email message to me commenting on the anecdotal stories in my movies on Canadian health care:
Ah, argument by anecdote, the last refuge of the scoundrel. [...] America has no shortage of terrible tales of maltreatment, deprivation, and wrongful death, but I'm not going to dip into that pond as I try to not enlist other's misfortunes as pawns in my argument.
And here he is commenting on the anecdotal stories in Michael Moore's Sicko:
Every story, every tale, every vignette asks the same question: "Who are we?" Who are we that our fellow citizens have to decide which fingers they'll pay to get reattached? Who are we that our hospitals push the ill and indigent into cabs, and drop them off, disoriented and clad in a paper-thin gown, on skid row?
I am scheduled to appear today on Your World with Neil Cavuto on the FOX News channel beginning between 4:30 and 4:45 EST discussing Michael Moore's schlock-umentary Sicko as well as my own films.
Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives in Vancouver has appeared in two Free Market Cure movies that I have produced. Here he is in a new video excerpt explaining what many Americans don't understand about the Canadian health care system. Click the thumbnail image below to play.
I appeared Thursday on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. program discussing single-payer health care and Michael Moore's movie 'Sicko'. Click the thumbnail image below to play.
Michael Moore's new docutribe Sicko is set to unleash a torrent of disinformation about the U.S. health care system that will play into the hands of those who wish to turn our entire health care industry over to government bureaucrats.
However, we're firing back with a new internet movie that attacks one of the central premises of his propaganda: that 45 million Americans have no health insurance - and no access to health care. Uninsured in America is a new 9-minute film which examines the facts behind the oft-repeated cries of an "uninsured crisis".
Free Market Cure is sponsored by the Moving Picture Institute (www.thempi.org). MPI identifies and nurtures promising filmmakers who are committed to protecting and sustaining a free society, and supports their work through grants, travel scholarships, awards, internships, training workshops, and networking opportunities.
If you enjoy the film and the website commentary - and if you agree that we should preserve choice and freedom in life-and-death decisions about medical care, then please tell others who share your views - or better yet - those who don't.
My new film, The Lemon (run time 7:46) shows how today's single-payer health care initiatives have a lot in common with the failed economic systems of eastern Europe. A system without competition and profits will lead to tight government control, shortages and medical rationing.
We're hearing that Michael Moore, in his upcoming movie, interviews some happy Canadians who are satisfied with their health care system. This doesn't surprise. Most healthy people don't like to think about getting sick and like the idea that if and when they do - they will be taken care of (especially if they think that someone else is footing the bill).
However, when Canadians get older and need more medical care, they run up against the strict rationing imposed by their system. After paying a life time's worth of high taxes to support socialized medicine, they come face-to-face with its' realities.
It's safe to say that Mr. Moore never interviewed Mary Lou Frye who has had her urgent brain surgery cancelled six times:
In March 2006, Mary Lou Frye had a seizure and drove off the Fraser Highway into a ditch.
A CAT scan revealed a golf ball-sized tumour behind her left eye. She had surgery in May 2006, but bleeding cut the operation short, leaving part of the tumour.
She now has two tumours in her brain, but since January Frye has had her surgery postponed six times, the latest last Friday when four other neurosurgery cases were also postponed.
The previous day, four neurosurgery cases were postponed due to a lack of beds.
Meanwhile, Frye, 64, who raised three kids as a single mom, is failing. Doctors have declared her urgent because of headaches, loss of balance and walking difficulty.
But Ms. Frye is not alone. Canada's Fraser Institute, in its' report Waiting Your Turn, estimates that over 770,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists.
We hear ad nauseum from the single-payer left about the supposed administrative efficiency of Medicare and Medicaid. Since insurance companies must control waste and fraud in order to make a profit for shareholders they are deemed inefficient. However, government can draw from the seemingly bottomless well of tax revenues. Here's the result:
In what was described as one of the biggest healthcare fraud cases ever in South Florida, federal prosecutors on Friday accused a couple of leading a billing company that bilked Medicare out of $56 million over a six-year stretch.
Mabel and Abner Diaz were accused of operating All-Med Billing Corp. of Miami Lakes in a scheme that used 29 durable medical equipment firms to submit false claims to Medicare.
"This is one of the most important cases ever filed by our office,'' U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said. "This is our money which could have been used to treat patients rather than line the pockets of the accused."
Just last week it was 45 million uninsured. Now, according to Michael Moore, it's 50 million!
How long, I wonder, before the number of uninsured exceeds the entire population of the U.S?
David Hogberg has some good commentary this morning on his blog about the inevitable results of community rating mandates:
The result of community rating is that younger, healthier people tend to decline insurance, since the average price they are charged is higher than what they would pay in an unregulated market. Those [who] do purchase it tend to be older and sicker, which drives the price of insurance higher.
FYI: Hillary Clinton is advocating community rating nationwide.
I've been meaning to comment all week about a particularly ignorant and erroneous (I'm being nice) health care op-ed in the New York Times this week by Nicholas Kristoff. Perhaps Mr. Kristoff should stick to covering Darfur rather than carrying water for the socialists at the PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Plan). Well, David Catron - at this excellent blog Health Care BS - beat me to the punch:
A New York Times journalist with a health care stat is like a toddler with a loaded pistol. The combination of intellectual underdevelopment and sophisticated weaponry is a recipe for mayhem. Anyone doubting this should read Nicholas Kristof's recent column ...
And ... if we did have a hole in our head, we might wait a very long time to get surgery for it if we adopted a system like the one in Canada.
Maybe, Michael Moore should have interviewed Canadian David Malleau who has endured a year-long wait for skull surgery after an accident:
David Malleau awoke in hospital with a gaping hole in his skull.
The 44-year-old Hamilton truck driver had suffered a devastating car accident in 2004 that forced doctors at Hamilton General Hospital to remove a fist-sized piece of bone from his skull to relieve pressure on his brain.
Once the swelling subsided and he was ready for surgery in March 2005, Malleau was sent home and placed on a waiting list.
Three months passed. Then six. He waited at home, a prisoner unable to leave the house for fear something would hit the exposed side of his brain - for him a potentially fatal incident. In the end, it took nearly a year before he could get skull replacement surgery.
[...]
Malleau, after finally getting his skull replacement surgery in January of last year, is paralyzed on his right side and his speech is only now beginning to return.
"I've pretty much had to fight for everything," says his wife Pat, a former bookkeeper.
"We were taxpayers. Owned our own home. We went from having our jobs, being in the middle class, to nothing."
Defenders of government-run medicine usually downplay waits for medical treatment by focusing on only one part of a multi-part wait process: the wait for scheduled surgery. They ignore the long waits to see a specialist and to get diagnostic tests. Further, they pretend as though the phenomenon of cancelled surgeries does not exist. But it does - and it is an expected occurance with real human consequences as this New Zealand story shows:
A Tuatapere man's 69th birthday celebrations turned sour last week when his hand operation at Southland Hospital was cancelled.
Retired mechanic Bob Warren was told his operation was cancelled because a surgeon had not performed the procedure for a long time, his wife said.
And of course, stories like this are everywhere in the English-language press of countries like Canada, Britain, New Zealand amd Australia - but not here in the U.S.
A CHIROPODIST whose operation was put back until April because of an embargo on non-urgent surgery, then fell victim to hospital staffing problems when she arrived to have it carried out.
Madeline Pavey, of Gillian Avenue, St Albans, saw her consultant in November about an hernia operation but was told that it could not be done until the beginning of April because the local Primary Care Trust had decided no non-urgent work would be carried out until the beginning of the new financial year.
But when Mrs Pavey got to Hemel Hempstead Hospital for the morning-scheduled operation on Monday, April 2, she soon realised something was wrong as time ticked away and there was no sign of the surgery being carried out.
Eventually she and the others who were waiting were told that there was no anaesthetist available and the hospital was trying to find one. Mrs Pavey said: "I almost fell off my chair. I thought it was a bit of a joke."
AN 81-year-old great-grandmother endured 82 hours of agony in a Perth hospital.
She lay immobilised on trolleys and in "holding pens'' before finally getting urgently-needed hip surgery in Royal Perth Hospital on Saturday.
Rita Robins' son Peter wants WA's besieged Health Minister Jim McGinty to explain why his fragile, elderly mum experienced days of fasting and constant surgery cancellations before she could get the operation for her seriously fractured left hip.
[...]
Mr Robins' wife Dianne said it broke her heart to see the suffering of her kind-hearted mother-in-law - who is a great-grandmother of five, grandmother of nine and a mother of four.
"I don't think you would do this to an animal,'' Mrs Robins said.
It's an amazing story of the brutality of health care rationing ...
For anyone harbouring doubts that health care reformers are more concerned with income redistribution than actual health care, Paul Krugman's op-ed in yesterday's New York Times is worth reading. Ostensibly a column on trade policy, Krugman comes back to his favorite theme in the last paragraph:
... if Democrats really want to help American workers, they'll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy's winners, would be a good place to start.
Hogberg
National Center website, David Hogberg has a new, well-researched paper on the Swedish health care system:
While Sweden is a first world country, its health care system - at least in regards to access - is closer to the third world. Because the health care system is heavily-funded and operated by the government, the system is plagued with waiting lists for surgery. Those waiting lists increase patients' anxiety, pain and risk of death.
The CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is going to start cracking down on "inefficient" doctors:
CMS has the data and computer capacity to identify physicians who are inefficient compared with their colleagues and as early as mid-2008 might begin to contact those physicians and ask them to become more efficient, Herbert Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the agency testified on Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing, CQ HealthBeat reports. At a House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing, Kuhn said that identification of inefficient physicians, or "profiling," would involve a comparison of the number of tests ordered by physicians for certain types of patients with the number ordered by colleagues in cases that have the same outcome.
Nearly blind after 3 year wait for cataract operation
Elderly people go blind waiting for cataract operations in nations with socialized health systems:
"IT'S nice, isn't it?" says Richard Adams pointing to his widescreen television. "But it's pointless me having it because I can't see anything."
Richard, 85, is blind in both eyes as a result of cataracts, but spends all his time in front of the television, listening to documentaries or the news.
Wheelchair-user Richard started losing his sight three years ago, but for the past six months has been almost completely blind in both eyes and feels trapped in the one room of his home in Ealing, west London.
However, he has keen insight into the incentives inherent in socialized medicine:
"I've been waiting for three years but they don't seem to care. I think they're just waiting for me to die or something."
More evidence that much health-care "reform" has nothing to do with health care for the poor and everything to do with state power and political ambition:
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a second-term Democrat, decided months ago to push a new health care initiative that would be among the most comprehensive in the country. It would offer not only insurance to everyone in Illinois, but also wellness training, special attention to chronic disease and streamlined administration.
Unlike efforts in other states, the plan would not simply shift or borrow money from existing programs but would be financed largely by a new tax on gross business receipts.
[...]
The proposed tax would apply to the gross receipts of businesses that make more than $2 million a year, and would range from 0.08 percent for businesses like retailers or wholesalers to 1.95 percent for service businesses.
However, even acclaimed friend of free markets and liberty Jesse Jackson thinks he's going too far:
"It would come through the small-business community like a tsunami," he said in an interview. "For a substantial number of small businesses and many of our established businesses, the tax would be higher than the profit. That is the real problem with it."
I'm thinking that if Blagojevich could target only white-owned businesses for taxation, he could possibly get Jackson on board.
It's always amusing to hear single-payer advocates defend the Canadian health care system's long waits for surgery by cherry-picking the data, ignoring the long waits to see specialists just to get a diagnosis - and intentionally confusing the meaning of the term "elective surgery":
Canada has no abnormal waiting times for emergency treatment, and some evidence shows Canadians get it quicker. The problems come in elective treatments, like joint replacements. - Ezra Klein Feb 27, 2006
Mr. Klein would have you believe that serious, life-threatening conditions are treated quickly. But that would not be the case:
Joe MacPherson has been waiting almost eight months for heart surgery in Halifax and still doesn't have a date scheduled.
[...]
He has been unable to work as a painter since having his first angina attack last August. Tests in September showed blockages in three arteries and he was soon put on a list for surgery.
He's exhausted employment insurance and finds the wait stressful "You put your life on hold," Mr. MacPherson said. "When you're diagnosed with angina, it's nothing to kid with."
One of the health-care-left's most prolific prevaricators, Ezra Klein (at his eponymous website), has made a habit of stating that:
Canadians do not wait inordinate lengths of time for health care.
Since Canadians only wait for elective surgery, their system is not so bad.
There are 45 million Americans who lack health insurance - and thus health care.
The U.S health care system is the #37th best system in the world right after Costa Rica.
All of these assertions are false and each has been addressed at some point on this blog (although I may revisit these fallacious arguments soon).
However, Mr. Klein recently suggested that anyone who denies the validity of the "45 million uninsured" trope is intellectually dishonest and beyond the pale. Fortunately, David Hogberg, at his fantastic new blog Health Hog, is helping to neutralize young collectivist Klein's single-payer propaganda. Now would be a good time to bookmark his site.
The plight of Lindsay McCreith of Ontario, Canada was popularized by my video A Short Course in Brain Surgery which told the story of his struggle to get timely medical attention under a system which severely rations health care. Now, the Canadian Constitution Foundation has announced its support for Mr. McCreith's constitutional challenge to Ontario's unjust centralized system:
Lindsay McCreith says he was almost killed by Ontario's health care monopoly. Now he hopes to get even with a constitutional challenge that, if successful, will pave the way for private care in a province dead set against it.
After suffering a seizure in January 2006, the 66-year-old retired Newmarket autobody-shop owner was told he likely had a malignant brain tumour. But he had to wait four-and-a-half months for an MRI to verify that diagnosis.
Mr. McCreith, unwilling to risk the wait and suspecting the growth was cancerous, got an MRI across the border in Buffalo, New York the next day. The scan confirmed his fears -- the tumour was malignant.
Even with this diagnosis, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so Mr. McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the growth.
His best friend and employee for 30-plus years wasn't so lucky. Don Stanley died last year waiting for triple bypass heart surgery, Mr. McCreith says. He had been turned away from a scheduled procedure because of a lack of beds at a downtown Toronto hospital.
If you're a regular reader here and have noticed a paucity of new blogging, rest asssured that I'm not standing still. More regular blogging will resume soon once editing is complete for a new video that I am close to completing called "Uninsured in America". This new video will explore what politicians, the media and some health care pundits call the "crisis" of 45 million without health insurance. I think you'll be surprised at how just *who* makes up the ranks of the uninsured.
The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial about the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) scam:
The Schip legislation defines potential recipients as children in families making twice the federal poverty line, or $41,300 a year for a family of four. But states are encouraged to apply for waivers to allow for more flexibility. Now 15 states have eligibility thresholds above 200% of poverty, and nine of those are at or over 300%. In New Jersey, the figure is 350%. New York recently passed a budget raising eligibility to the highest in the nation at 400%--or $82,600 for a family of four. That's an income close to what Democrats usually define as "rich" when they're trying to raise taxes.
Defenders of single-payer health care habitually point out that waiting lists exist for only "elective" surgery in countries with government-run medicine. What they don't bother to mention is that nearly ALL surgery is considered "elective" including most vascular and cancer surgeries.
Additionally, discussions about waits for surgery seldom account for the near universal phenomenon of cancelled surgeries. This story from the South African press (which could easily have been Canada or the U.K.) chronicles the sad story of a man who died while waiting for a repeatedly delayed surgery:
We are told my father is to be scheduled for an angioplasty, a surgical procedure to restore normal blood flow through a narrowed or blocked artery. If this doesn't work his foot will be amputated.
The surgery is considered elective as opposed to an emergency procedure, and because of cutbacks this section has only been allocated three elective operations for the month. Preference is given to emergencies.
With the cutbacks the definition of an emergency has changed and those who might previously have been treated are sent home and told to come back three weeks later.
But, hey - as socialized-medicine-advocate Matthew Holt would say - he was 87 years old "and that as he was likely to die soon anyway that money would have been better spent on pre-natal care"!
I want to again bring attention to the excellent editorials of Richard Ralston, Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. Mr. Ralston writes from a pro-individual rights, pro-capitalism point of view which holds that socialized, government-run medicine as not only impractical, but immoral. Like this blogger, I believe Mr. Ralston is also an admirer of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand. His latest editorial is definitely worth a read:
In a free market, if you did not have much to spend on insurance premiums, you could buy a policy that simply covers you for a major illness or a severe injury. Many people worry about the financial ruin that might result from such misfortune and want coverage only for that. They are willing to take their own risk for routine medical expenses if they have reasonable coverage for emergencies.
Such policies are often forbidden by state governments. In California, for example, such policies are not available. Legislators and regulators have imposed 49 specific coverage requirements on all insurance companies. Many states have such requirements. It does not matter if you do not want coverage for chiropractic, or in vitro fertilization, or electronic shock or hypnotherapy for mental illness - you may still have to pay for it.
Private insurance companies must pay for medical care from premiums collected. Therefore, they must monitor and control health insurance claims. Government, however, can draw from a bottomless money-pit as Richard Ralston points out:
Critics point to supposedly lower administrative costs of Medicare and Medicaid as compared to those of insurance companies. Note that this claim is always stated as a percentage of higher spending. Medicare administrative cost can be disproportionately low because they do not bother to control expense or even fraud.
Extravagant spending by New York Medicaid has been justified by state legislators on the grounds that every dollar of waste and fraud brings a matching Federal dollar into the state. Such reasoning has been repeated by legislators across the United States. That is what passes in government circles for administrative efficiency.
Professional Detoxer
Today's New York Times provides a glimpse (registration required) at how New York administers its Medicaid program:
With grim humor, some doctors in New York call them "frequent fliers" - addicts who check into hospital detoxification units so often that dozens of them spend more than 100 nights a year in those wards.
Through its Medicaid program, New York spends far more than other states on drug and alcohol treatment, including more than $300 million a year paid to hospitals for more than 30,000 detox patients. One reason for the high cost is that $50 million is spent just on the 500 most expensive patients, at a cost of about $100,000 a person. These patients check in and out of detox wards, on average, more than a dozen times a year
[...]
George Epps, 59, was a heavy user of alcohol, cocaine and heroin and says he went through detox programs around New York City 20 to 25 times over several years. "I would come out of detox and rent a room, squander my money on drugs and women, be homeless again for a while, and check back into detox," said Mr. Epp
[...]
By law, hospitals cannot turn away emergency patients, and drug or alcohol withdrawal is considered an emergency.
However, such profligate spending requires tremendous sacrifices by taxpayers as shown in a must-read essay entitled "The Medicaid Penny" by Dr. Larry Huntoon:
It was a reality the politicians could no longer ignore. After paying the county a share of the Medicaid bill, Erie County, New York (home of Buffalo) had insufficient money left to run county government.
In November, 2004, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra announced the grim news: The cost of one single state-mandated program Medicaid is greater than the the entire Erie County property tax levy.
[...]
The problem of Medicaid costs is particularly acute in New York State for a number of reasons. New York differs from other states, where Medicaid funding is generally split 50:50 between federal and state governments. In New York State, 50 percent of the cost is federally funded, 25 percent is state funded, and 25 percent is funded by counties or, in the case of New York City, by a city income tax. County property taxes are the principal source of Medicaid funding for all of the counties in New York State. As a result, local property taxes in New York are among the highest in the nation
[...]
High property taxes have been particularly devastating in rural communities, where farmers are being driven out of business.
Single-Payer health care advocates like young collectivist Ezra Klein often point to 45 million uninsured Americans as a "moral disgrace". However, it's hard to know whether they mean that the more than 17 million people (37% of the uninsured) who make more than $50K a year are immoral for not buying health insurance - or - our government is immoral for not forcing them to.
One thing's for sure: as morally outraged as they are about Americans without insurance, they aren't similarly indignant about Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders without health care. And that's a shame - because they continually advocate that the U.S. adopt a nationalized, single-payer health care system like the ones in place in those countries. If they were truly concerned with health - as opposed to wealth redistribution - they might be morally outraged by stories like these:
A London family waiting for life-saving heart surgery for their 16-year-old daughter is angry after the operation was cancelled for a lack of hospital beds.
Julia de Zeeuw needs an operation to correct a narrowing in a heart valve.
The Grade 10 student was scheduled for surgery at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children in late February, but the operation was cancelled only the day before.
PETER Horne's art was his life, but now he spends his time sitting and waiting for hand surgery to revive his career.
Despite being assessed as a category 2 patient -- meaning he should not wait more than 90 days for surgery -- the 61-year-old has already been on the waiting list at Royal Melbourne Hospital for more than two years.
The Ashburton artist has been disabled since rheumatoid arthritis crippled his hands, shoulder and left ankle following a white-tailed spider bite in 1994.
Mr Horne has been waiting since January 2005 to have reconstructive surgery to repair his hands, and though he has twice been booked in for the surgery, each time it has been cancelled at the eleventh hour.
A FAMILY today told how they were close to breaking point after a vital operation was put on hold three times.
Gordon and Gillian Harris, who care for their two adult disabled sons and Mrs Harris's severely disabled brother Tony Pople, told how Ipswich Hospital postponed a vital operation, causing the family distress and anxiety.
The operation, to remove a large hernia from Tony Pople's face, was due to take place on March 22 and the couple, of Edinburgh Gardens, Claydon, had arranged transport and the necessary provisions for Mr Pople who lives with a severe mental and physical disability.
But the day before the operation was set to take place the hospital called to postpone it.
Following up on my post last week about the unreliability of information about waiting lists produced by governments with socialized medicine, is this story about a cancer specialist in the U.K. who has admitted to manipulating waiting lists:
A senior cancer specialist admitted today giving patients unnecessary treatments to manipulate hospital waiting lists.
Chris Hamilton, consultant clinical oncologist at Hull's Princess Royal Hospital, told the BBC the problem was a government requirement that all treatment began within 31 days of diagnosis.
He says it means some low-risk patients are being treated before more urgent cases.
Mr Hamilton told the BBC he had given some prostate cancer patients hormone therapy to move them down the waiting list.
He said: "You're caught in a bind. Either you give them unnecessary treatment with hormones and reclassify them or you put them to the front of the queue where they shouldn't really be."
He added that he knew other hospitals were carrying out a similar practice and he had informed national cancer director Mike Richards.
Another great op-ed from Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine:
In the face of this calamity and such inspirations as the tired response of all levels of government to Hurricane Katrina, the tireless advocates of medical socialism will continue to maintain that only the government can care for us adequately.
In the face of New York's cartel of hospital administrators and health care public employee unions driving the annual cost of New York Medicaid past $47 billion and clamoring for more, the friends of ever-growing government will tell us that they will always manage spending better than private providers.
Health care lefty Matthew Holt incredibly asserts today that "care is rationed in the US just as much as it is elsewhere". Certainly, Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA, and billions of dollars spent on charity care for the uninsured and illegal aliens have introduced waiting into the U.S. system. Who hasn't had to sit in a room full of Medicare recipients while waiting to see the doctor? However, in countries where the government fully controls the health care system - like socialized U.K. and single-payer Canada - medical rationing is explicitly built into the system - in the form of global hospital and technology budgets - as a matter of public policy.
Perhaps, Mr. Holt can tell us where the picture below was taken:
Nope, it's not the U.S. - or even Cold War-era Poland. It's a picture of citizens in Mr. Holt's homeland of Great Britain lining up for government-provided dental services.
Ever seen something like this in the United States?
Politicians and bureaucrats in countries with nationalized health care are shameless in their sloganeering and propagandizing for government medicine. Manipulation of wait time statistics and sheer up-is-downism prevails. This story from the British press would be amusing if not for the human suffering involved:
A HEALTH minister insists NHS waiting lists are falling - but ... readers are queuing up to tell him he is WRONG. Andy Burnham defended the health service's record in a letter praising its "world class" treatment.
He wrote: "I am proud of the NHS and I know staff share this pride."
And he paid tribute to "record low numbers of people waiting for treatment and the fastest ever treatment for cancer patients".
But we have been inundated with complaints from patients.
Retired engineer Phil Murdoch told how he had to wait six months for a vital cancer operation. Phil, 61, said the disease was just in his prostate when it was diagnosed. But by the time surgeons operated, it had spread to his bladder - slashing his chances of survival.
Dad-of-two Phil is now waiting to see if six months of drugs and radiotherapy has killed the tumour.
He said: "The waiting is agony - I shouldn't be going through this."
It's annoying to read Paul Krugman in this morning's New York Times complaining about evasion and dishonesty by the Bush administration in their opposition to expansion of the SCHIP program (State Children's Insurance Program) while he simultaneously posits that the program "would provide essential health care to the eight million uninsured children in this country".
What he doesn't mention is that the proposed SCHIP expansion will provide government health insurance to children whose parents make upwards of $80K a year while displacing private insurance. Also - there are certainly not 8 million truly uninsured children in the U.S. Out of the alleged 47 million Americans uninsured, over 17 million reside in households having over $50K in annual income, over 14 million are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but have not enrolled and over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34 who as a group spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, dining out and entertainment as they do on out-of-pocket spending for health care. Finally, millions of illegal immigrants are also included in the number of Americans without insurance. Indeed, David Gratzer in his book "The Cure" estimates that the total number of truly uninsured is around 8.2 million.
Getting reliable information about waits times for medical treatment in countries with national health insurance is difficult. Government bureaucracies, while inept at providing customer service, excel in obfuscation. While officials blather on about "wait time guarantees" and targeted reductions in waits for things like cataract surgery, shortened queues for one type of procedure often result in longer queues for another. Additionally, government-published wait times for surgical procedures are grossly misleading as there are typically multiple waits involved: waiting to see a specialist, waiting for a diagnostic test, waiting for surgery, waiting again for surgery after having it cancelled at the last minute.
New Zealand, with it's abysmal wait times and government-induced suffering, has a novel way of reducing the political fallout associated with long waits for treatment: make people wait to get on the wait list:
It used to be that people awaiting non-urgent treatment in the free health system languished on waiting lists. Now they languish off waiting lists ... Instead of putting all referrals on a waiting list, health boards must now assess patients' urgency and accept only as many as they can treat within six months. Thus waiting lists cannot grow to politically embarrassing proportions. Problem solved.
Tom Firey over at Cato has more analysis of the proposed SCHIP expansion:
CHIP was once intended to help children in families that are low-income but that do not qualify for Medicaid; now Congress is pushing for the state-operated/federally supported program to use its money to cover families up to four times the poverty level (e.g., a family of four earning $82,600 a year) - that is, nearly all families in the second-highest income quintile, aka the upper middle class.
The left has long conflated health insurance and health care. Patients in countries with national health insurance, however, can sadly attest to the fact that "coverage" does not equal timely access to quality medical care.
Now, as part of a shamefully exploitative and dishonest campaign to "cover the children", liberals have decided that only government insurance is true insurance:
The Bush administration says it will strenuously resist Democratic plans for a threefold expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, ...
Administration officials said that much of the new government coverage proposed by Democrats would simply replace private insurance ...
Dennis G. Smith, the federal official in charge of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, said 45 percent of all children were now covered by the two programs, up from 28 percent in 1998.
"The original intent of the Children's Health Insurance Program was to cover low-income children who were uninsured," Mr. Smith said in an interview. Democratic proposals to cover millions of additional children "would change the complexion of the program and take it away from its original intent," he said.
If the debate was truly about children's health care, liberal democrats would limit the program to children who are actually uninsured. However ...
[Senator John] Mr. Dingell and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, recently introduced bills that would encourage states to cover children up to four times the poverty level - up to $82,600 for a family of four.
... and if it were truly about children's health care, liberal democrats would consider the consequences of government-run medicine for children in places like Australia as described in this news story:
An eight-year-old boy has lost hearing capacity while waiting nearly a year for simple ear surgery.
... but, the debate is not truly about health care. Rather, liberal democrats and their allies seek government power over the lives of individuals and easier ways to redistribute income and wealth. Health care is merely a convenient vehicle.
Dr. Eric Novak is an orthopedic surgeon and health policy commentator in Phoenix. As a potential victim of the movement to "universal health care", he is speaking up:
Just as it is morally repugnant for employers or the government to require workers to work extra hours without pay, it is unethical for a society that cherishes freedom to create a system where a right to health care obligates doctors to provide care at any time, and for a price that is dictated by government.
The cover story of the April 2 New York Magazine is a long and sympathetic look at "young invincibles" in New York City - young and healthy people who can't afford or don't wish to buy health insurance. Artists, bike messengers and carpenters all go on record with their strategies for getting by in the big city without the financial safety net provided by insurance.
Certainly, health insurance in New York is all but unaffordable for young people just starting out and paying sky-high Gotham rents. However, the author of the piece only makes a cursory attempt to explain why this is the case:
The common assumption is that the exorbitant rates are schemed up by the politically influential executives governing the trillion-dollar insurance industry. But if insurers could target cheaper plans at younger New Yorkers, they would: Every business thrives by exploiting untapped markets. State law, however, requires insurers to follow a "community rating" system that throws everyone - young, old, sick, healthy - into one risk pool.
In 1993, the New York legislature essentially destroyed the market for individual and small group insurance by imposing "community rating" and "guaranteed issue" mandates. Community rating means that everyone in the same risk pool is charged the same. Guaranteed issue means that no one can be turned away - or charged more - for pre-existing conditions. This means that people can wait until after they've developed a chronic condition to get insurance. The result of these new mandates was skyrocketing insurance premiums for individuals. The annual premium for a policy covering a single male aged 30 before the imposition of mandates was $1,200. Afterwards: $3,240!
And now - according to the New York Times, Hillary Clinton wants to impose community rating and guaranteed issue mandates nationally:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York assailed the health insurance industry and said she would prohibit insurers from denying coverage or charging much higher premiums to people with medical problems.
Try as I might, I just can't find stories about the U.S. health care system that compare with the continuing stream of socialized medicine outrage that flows from the Canadian press:
When Carolyn Moss went into the Lakeshore General Hospital (LGH) for a pre-operation procedure Feb. 20, two weeks before she was scheduled to have orthopedic surgery, she never dreamed there wouldn't be an anesthesiologist available for her operation.
But when Moss arrived at the LGH March 6, the day of her operation, she was stunned to discover there were no anesthesiologists on call for her procedure.
[...]
After discussing her options with her doctor, Moss decided on the spot to have the operation with local anesthetic and an Ativan - an anti-anxiety drug - rather than wait a month or two for her surgery to be re-scheduled.
For four long years, I have been on the waiting list for duodenal switch surgery.
For me, this surgery is a necessity. Simply put, it cuts the size of your stomach in half and reroutes part of your lower intestine, aiding in faster weight loss.
Because of many medical problems, undertaking a large amount of exercise to lose weight is medically out of the question for me. A specialist told me I needed surgery, so I went onto the waiting list.
[...]
Earlier this year, though, I was informed that this surgery is no longer being done in Saskatchewan. I got this news in a newspaper, not from a doctor, and was given no alternative. "Go away, don't make any noise, just suffer somewhere else" -- that's what it feels like we were told.
Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine is one of my favorite health care policy writers as he emphasizes both the impracticality - and the immorality - of socialized medicine. He's written a fantastic new short editorial defending the rights of the biggest victims of government-run health care: doctors.
While Governor Schwarzenegger and California legislators are busy putting forward proposals to socialize health care, one element is profoundly missing: none of these politicians know or care what physicians think of the proposals. It should have occurred to them that physicians are, to say the least, rather central to maintaining good health care. But physicians and their views are obviously considered to be unimportant - an individual's need for healthcare entitles him to the knowledge, ability, careers and lives of physicians. Apparently, physicians are nothing more than a natural resource, like oil reserves - and are to be allocated by the government.
Read it all ... and if you agree with it, please forward it to your personal physician.
The U.S. Census Bureau now says that it has overstated the number of uninsured Americans:
The government's estimate of the number of Americans without health insurance fell by nearly 2 million Friday, but not because anyone got health coverage.
The Census Bureau said it has been overstating the number of people without health insurance since 1995. The bureau blamed the inflated numbers on a 12-year-old computer programming error.
[...]
The revised estimates show that 44.8 million people, or 15.3 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2005. The original estimate was 46.6 million, or about 15.9 percent of the population.
But what's a little 1.8 million person error compared with the Census Bureau's counting of 12 million illegal immigrants and 14 million Medicaid-eligible people as "Uninsured Americans"?
Funny how the proponents of single-payer health care always laud the French and Italian systems but never mention government-run health care successes in English speaking countries. Why could that be?
Here's a recent sampling of stories from the English language press about the health care hell that Kiwis endure:
It is more than 20 years since Colin Marchant missed out on an operation to have varicose veins removed from his left leg, because the anaesthetist was unavailable.
Breast cancer patient Louise MacKenzie waited three months for vital radiotherapy - and when she got it she also got burned.
The lecturer at Auckland's Unitec business school was meant to start radiotherapy within four weeks of having a partial mastectomy. She had her surgery in the first week of July, but radiotherapy started only in the first week of October.
She is among the thousands of New Zealanders whose health is affected by growing waiting lists for non-urgent treatment. The general trend in elective treatment is causing surgery such as varicose vein treatment to become almost impossible unless patients are in pain.
A woman waiting for radiotherapy is outraged that health chiefs say patients like her will wait 12 weeks for treatment, even though she received a letter indicating 14 to 16 weeks.
Our new film, Two Women (run time 4:32), shows that having the government determine health care access and priorities can have truly unfortunate consequences for some people. Set in Ontario, Canada - this powerful video serves as a cautionary example of where single-payer health care reform will lead if adopted in the United States.
Children in the U.K. supposedly have a right to dental care. However, health insurance is not the same as health care:
A WORRIED mum has hit out because her young daughter has been waiting more than seven months to have a tooth removed.
Despite being in terrible pain and her tooth starting to fall out, Jasmine Maddox Dodd, seven, of Aberderfyn Road, Ponciau, has been put on numerous waiting lists to have an abscess on her tooth treated.
Mum Jacqui is furious at how long it is taking to end her daughter's agony.
She said: "Jasmine has been waiting to have her tooth removed since September of last year. I think it's absolutely disgraceful she should have to wait this long for something which, according to our dentist, should be relatively straightforward."
While Connecticut lawmakers flirt with single-payer health care, the results of government-run medicine are published daily around the world like a laboratory experiment for all to see:
The Belfast Telegraph revealed recently that nearly 7,000 patients across Northern Ireland are waiting for desperately needed scans to find out if they have potentially life-threatening conditions such as cancer.
It is understood some patients are waiting up to 12 months for an MRI scan.
Ulster patients with severe hip problems are being forced to wait more than three years simply to be assessed for surgery by specialists at an overstretched Belfast hospital, the Telegraph can reveal today.
Those found to require hip replacements at Musgrave Park Hospital also face a wait of more than three years for their actual operations, according to extraordinary new figures.
Anger is mounting over proposed R30 million budget cuts at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals, with a senior surgeon at Groote Schuur revealing he has patients who face a wait of more than 18 years for operations.
The federal government has provided provinces with an extra $36 billion in transfers for health care since 1997, yet Canada's health care system is in worse shape now than it was 10 years ago, according to a new report by the Fraser Institute.
In a fine example (registration required) of advocacy journalism, the New York Times, in an article on page A1 entitled "Lacking Papers, Citizens Are Cut From Medicaid", yesterday deplored an unconscionable hurdle that the Bush administration has heartlessly placed in the path of Americans seeking free health care: proving that they are indeed Americans. Predictably, the Times reporter profiles a child in need of heart surgery whose mother is unable to readily prove citizenship.
Rhiannon M. Noth, 28, of Cincinnati applied for Medicaid in early December. When her 3-year-old son, Landen, had heart surgery on Feb. 22, she said, "he did not have any insurance" because she had been unable to obtain the necessary documents. For the same reason, she said, she paid out of pocket for his medications, and eye surgery was delayed for her 2-year-old daughter, Adrianna.
The children eventually got Medicaid, but the process took 78 days, rather than the 30 specified in Ohio Medicaid rules.
It's hard for me to see the problem here. The health care was free and the child obviously did not wait for the surgery - as the citizens of countries with national health insurance do.
However, in case the reader missed the point, the Times followed up on the opinion page with an editorial (registration required) railing against the Bush administration's efforts to "promote its free-market philosophy" in health care:
At a time when the nation is pondering how to provide medical coverage to some 47 million uninsured Americans, it is logical and right to start with the country's nine million uninsured children. The Bush administration, unfortunately, is going in exactly the opposite direction.
Apparently, "All The News That's Fit To Print" doesn't include the fact that the number of truly uninsured - after subtracting illegal immigrants, the Medicaid-eligible and households with more than $50K in annual income - is closer to 8 million. Certainly, The New York Times is not letting facts get in the way of the effort to "promote its socialist philosophy" in health care.
Also: Here's one story we probably won't be hearing about in the NY Times. (Hat tip: David Hogberg)
More than 300 morbidly obese people waiting for weight loss surgery in Saskatoon have been told the program is being cancelled.
Patients have been told to seek other options after learning that as of mid-June, no more bariatric surgeries will be performed in Saskatoon - the main centre for the procedure in Saskatchewan.
The cancellation has left many people like Kathy Glasgow - who's been waiting four years for her operation - wondering what they will do now.
"I feel hurt because this is the one thing I looked forward to," she said. "We've been waiting ... it's like a waiting game with my life."
Marion Rodger is quick to stress she's not a complainer.
But the 74-year-old retired piano teacher has decided it's time to do some serious complaining about the state of Ontario's health care.
On Thursday, Rodger was driven from her Ipperwash home for scheduled hip replacement surgery in London -- only to learn at the last minute the surgery was cancelled because of a lack of beds.
She was one of five patients sent home that day from University Hospital without having their scheduled operations.
"I just broke down in tears," Rodger said of the moment when she, her husband and daughter were informed the surgery scheduled seven months ago was off.
For decades, federal and state governments have driven up the cost of health care and insurance with thousands of ill-advised interventions into the medical marketplace. One bright spot, however, has been cosmetic surgery. Over the years, cosmetic procedures have become cheaper while quality has greatly improved. The cosmetic surgery market is mostly unburdened with government and third-party payer distortions resulting in medical deflation as opposed to the inflation that we see elsewhere.
Democratic lawmakers in several states are now attempting to change that with a new "vanity tax" on cosmetic surgery beginning in New Jersey:
A new precedent has been set in the cosmetic surgery industry, but it has nothing to do with surgical results. In September, New Jersey became the first state to enact a vanity tax on cosmetic surgery and Botox injections - a move that lawmakers elsewhere are now seeking to emulate, potentially leaving physicians and their patients at a loss.
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers Tuesday unveiled a $900 million universal health care plan that would be financed in part by raising taxes on cigarettes and health care providers and initiating a new tax on elective cosmetic surgery.
The so-called vanity tax is particularly offensive. Productive individuals who have taken responsibility for their own lives and have made the decision to use their money to improve themselves aesthetically are to be punished for their vanity by a rapacious state eager for tax revenues.
As a followup to my posting last week, it should be pointed out that over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, people between 25 and 34 spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they do for out-of-pocket spending on health care. If we infer that spending for people in their early-20s is similar to their mid-20s and early-30s, then the graph below tells us something about the "crisis" of 47 million uninsured.
While the single-payer left blathers on about evil insurance companies and life expectancies in countries with socialized medicine, the reality of government-run health care in the mother country has been laid bare in an article just published in the UK press:
More than a million people are waiting for a first hospital appointment.
160,000 waiting from 8 to 13 weeks to see a specialist.
775,000 waiting for operations.
At one hospital, 1 in 4 patients waiting for rescheduled surgery after a month.
Today we present a guest editorial from author and health care commentator Dave Racer:
Mandate universal health insurance? Because the uninsured rate has soared? The "I" Word
Recently, I proposed to a broad coalition of health insurance agents that any legislative remedy for what ails health care had to start with a factual assessment of the data. When confronted by how immigration affects uninsurance, however, they protested. "Immigration is the third rail of modern politics."
Here is the reality-check: The U.S. Census Bureau claims there are 46 million uninsured Americans. They insist that the number of uninsured is swelling each year. This, we are told, is a "crisis" so grave that it requires overhauling our health care system.
Many governors assert that the only way to solve this crisis is to mandate health insurance for everyone. Many others demand that the government take over all of health care. The uninsured "crisis" is so bad that there just are no other wise choices. Ordinary people, we are told, can not be trusted nor afford to insure themselves.
Giving government the authority to mandate anything is a serious issue. Such a critical decision, then, had better be made based on sound data.
While picking through the minutiae of a Minnesota report about the increase in uninsured people, I found an astonishing fact: The 64 percent increase (from 4.5 to 7.4 percent) in the number of uninsured in Minnesota from 2001-2004 is almost entirely attributable to people who are " ...Hispanic/Latino and born in a Hispanic nation..." and who work as temporary or seasonal workers.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2003, more than 11 million immigrants were uninsured - they gave no indication whether this total included legal or illegal immigrants. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that during March 2006, the illegal immigrant population had swelled to 12 million. The truth is that we really do not know how many of the uninsured are illegal immigrants. Here is where it really gets interesting.
After performing walletectomies on North Carolina obstetricians with the aid of junk science about cerebral palsy, John Edwards is now outlining his proposal for government-run health care in a new video:
Apparently, a majority of Americans have bought into the myth - endlessly perpetuated in the media - of 47 million people without health insurance - and hence, without health care - as evidenced by a new CBS News/New York Times poll:
However, the 2005 U.S.Census Bureau Current Population Survey report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (Table 8 on page 22), shows that over 17 million - more than one third - of the uninsured reside in households with annual incomes in excess of $50K. I've created a piechart to illustrate:
2005: The Uninsured By Income
Also, an April 26, 2005 article in the LA Times estimated that from 10 to 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, but have not enrolled. Indeed, the actual number of Americans who can't get health insurance is much less than half of what is consistently reported. Various health care "reformers" don't feel the need to be honest about just who is uninsured while they strongly imply that health insurance equals medical care in order to press for total government health care financing - and the mainstream media is their dependable ally.
On The Fence Film's Evan Maloney will be in Washington, D.C. tonight for a screening of the trailer of our upcoming film on higher education "Indoctrinate U" at CPAC. This appearance is part of an event hosted by the Moving Picture Institute. Stop by and say hello if you're in the area of the Omni Shoreham hotel around 8:30PM.
Young collectivist Ezra Klein, lover of all things government, ponderer of actuarial tables, self-styled health care expert, advocate of socialized medicine, emailed me last year concerning the news items that I post here at my website showing the disastrous and predictable results of government rationing of health care:
Ah, argument by anecdote, the last refuge of the scoundrel. [...] America has no shortage of terrible tales of maltreatment, deprivation, and wrongful death, but I'm not going to dip into that pond as I try to not enlist other's misfortunes as pawns in my argument. You, unfortunately, have no similar scruples.
"It is shameful that the U.S. is the only modern nation without a nationalized health care system."
"The U.S. lets 46 million people go without health insurance while other OECD countries provide free health care for all."
"Poor Americans are denied health care while the citizens of Europe get equal access to health care without regard to financial status."
For a quick reality-check, let's review how the socialized health care systems of Europe and Canada have been portrayed in their own media in the last few weeks:
While Ottawa and the provinces are struggling to reduce surgical wait times for hips and knees, some Canadians are waiting years to see a back specialist, according to a new survey released to CTV and The Globe and Mail.
People with often crippling back problems are being forced to live with debilitating pain while they wait, said Dr. Michael Ford, a spine surgeon.
According to the informal survey of back specialists by the Canadian Spine Society, many of his colleagues have over 1,000 patients waiting for a consultation, he said.
"These people have been on waiting lists for up to six years," he told CTV News.
BREAST screening waiting times for patients from the Omagh district have been described as "absolutely disgraceful" by local GP and SDLP West Tyrone Assembly candidate Dr Jo Deehan.
She revealed for cases deemed as non urgent patients may have to wait up to six months, and even for urgent cases there is still more than 25% of woman wait up to six weeks to be seen.
Women in Hertsmere are among the 3,500 affected by the suspension of routine breast screening at the North London Breast Screening Service (NLBSS).
NLBSS, which serves Hertsmere, Three Rivers, Watford and north London, wrote to patients just before Christmas, explaining that their appointments for mammograms have been postponed until services resume.
But Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the service, has still not given a date of when this will be, two months after the sevice was temporarily suspended.
A Scarborough mother is hoping her complaint to Rouge Valley Health System will ensure other surgical patients don't encounter the same communication mishap she endured this month.
Catherine Baillie filed a grievance with the hospital's patient relations consultant, Jana Bartley, after spending a frustrating day Feb. 14 waiting for exploratory surgery at the Centenary site in Scarborough.
She was scheduled for a laparoscopy to determine if she suffers from a painful condition known as endometriosis.
However, after eight hours of waiting, a cold and hungry Baillie learned the operation had been cancelled in the morning, but the news had not been conveyed to her.
If politicians were forced to use the government-run health care rationing systems that they administer, we would probably see the downfall of socialized medicine around the world. Stephen Robertson is Minister of Health for Queensland, the third most populous state of Australia where he oversees the taxpayer-supported, government-run, public health care system. Australia has long waiting lists for diagnostic tests, appointments with specialists, and surgery. Mercifully, Australia (unlike Canada) also has private hospitals as an alternative to the public queue. Last week, when Health Minister Robertson needed an operation, guess where he chose to have it done?
Queensland's Health Minister Stephen Robertson has had minor heart surgery.
He was admitted to St Andrews Private Hospital on Friday after feeling unwell and short of breath.
The Premier Peter Beattie says Mr Robertson had an angioplasty procedure and is now back at home.
It's too bad that many citizens of Australia - having paid high taxes to support government-run health care system - can't afford to make the same choice.
Two stories from this weekend's British press provide (for anyone who wishes to see) great insight into the priorities of a health care system run by politicians:
Nearly half of NHS hospitals are delaying operations to save money and the political skin of under-fire Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
Surgery is being postponed for at least 20 weeks in 43 per cent of hospitals until the start of the new financial year in a bid to balance the books.
But despite beds being available and doctors and nurses on call, campaigners said the delays were a "scandal" designed to save the career of the beleaguered minister rather than promoting the interests of patients.
Ms Hewitt pledged to she would resign if the NHS was not in the black at the end of the financial year in April.
Cancer patients are having to wait months beyond recommended dates for treatment to prevent the disease returning, say frustrated consultants.
After tumours are removed by surgery, patients should get follow-up radiotherapy within 28 days, according to Royal College of Radiologists guidelines.
But in many areas the wait is much longer.
In Kent, for instance, the waiting time for breast cancer patients is at least three months. Three patients have seen the disease return during the long gap between operation and radiotherapy.
Older patients waiting for orthopedic surgery like hip and knee replacements are often the quiet victims of socialized health care. Their waits to see specialists and subsequent waits for surgery are often interminable. Not only do they wait for years - but they wait in pain and misery. Often, their cases are more expensive and disabling because of the long wait. Here's a story from New Zealand that shows this very clearly:
Orthopaedic surgeons at Dunedin Hospital say they are being forced to ration treatment to the crippled, immobile and housebound.
In the latest Otago District Health Board orthopaedic newsletter to GPs, the surgeons said they had no alternative but to limit their attentions to the worst-affected due to lack of funding and increased demand,
"Currently, we are typically operating on patients who have two crutches, a frame or are in wheelchairs. They are virtually housebound and...will be on maximum medication which may include opiates.
"In addition, they are likely to have serious bone loss on their X-rays. Unless your patient falls into this group it is unlikely that we will be able to perform their surgery within six months," the letter read.
[...]
Patients with conditions including "ganglion, bunion surgery, ingrown toenails (and) lesser toe deformities" would not be operated on.
Spokesman for the surgeons, John Matheson, verified the statements made in the newsletter, obtained by The Otago Daily Times.
By the time people had enough points to qualify for surgery, their quality of life was awful, he said.
The advocates of government-run health care focus on insurance in the U.S. forgetting (or ignoring) that health insurance does not equal health care.
Having scheduled surgery cancelled at the last moment is a routine fact of life under socialized health care systems. Because hospitals are run on annual global budgets that constrict spending on operating rooms and IC units - and because the hours that a surgeon is allowed to operate per week are severly limited, there's not a lot of slack in the system. When emergency patients arrive, elective surgery patients have their procedures cancelled.
Unfortunately, 'elective surgery' doesn't mean 'optional'. The term describes nearly all cancer treatments. Cardiac bypass operations are 'elective'. So when urgently needed surgeries are cancelled at the last minute - often after a patient has waited months and sometime years for a date - it's a big deal.
It's nearly impossible to find news stories in the U.S. about cancelled surgeries. However, in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and other countries who have completely turned over their health care system to government, these stories are a daily occurance. Here are a few recent ones:
HOSPITAL patient Barbara Grimsley is furious after her latest operation was cancelled - as she waited to go into theatre.
The mum-of-five said she waited four hours at Coventry's University Hospital for a knee operation but she was sent home because of emergency admissions.
Mrs Grimsley, aged 50, of The Moorfield, Stoke Aldermoor, was looking forward to having the operation after two previous operation dates were cancelled.
But she was distraught when it was cancelled again after the operating theatre had to be used to treat emergency patients.
Mrs Grimsley, who is registered disabled said: "They had my knee all marked up and I was sat in my nightie waiting for four hours before we were told.
A SHEFFIELD hospital has postponed 10 operations today as it continues to deal with an influx of emergency patients.
It is the second day running that managers at the Northern General Hospital have needed to put off non-urgent operations. In total 36 operations have been postponed so far.
Repeated cancellations of heart operations owing to a chronic shortage of intensive-care unit (ICU) beds at Christchurch Hospital has raised concerns at the highest level.
David Hogberg at The National Center nails health care charlatan Matthew Holt:
Over at the inaptly named Health Care Blog ("Socialized Medicine Blog" would be more accurate), Matthew Holt gives a mini-seminar on the dangers of only reading a press release and not reading the actual study on which the press release is based.
[...]
Holt states: "There's been lots of BS about how the price reductions in those ads for LASIK 'prove' that cash based consumer payment works in health care." And what is that alleged bovine fecal matter regarding LASIK surgery? In a nutshell, it is inconsistent bundling of services, misleading advertising, and lack of information on quality.
However, if you dig into the study, which Holt clearly didn't, LASIK surgery performs very well on two crucial market factors: price and customer satisfaction. As market advocates have argued, when people pay for a service directly, providers compete on price, thereby driving prices down.
Women who have opted to have their ovaries and womb removed in an effort to prevent ovarian and breast cancer have been left waiting for a bed, according to a leading consultant oncologist.
Prof Peter Daly, consultant medical oncologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin said he has had "the unhappy situation" where a woman has had to come to terms with the prospect of surgery and make arrangements, only to be told that there is no bed for her when she arrives for surgery.
A WELSH businesswoman has chronicled the "inhumane" delays in treatment for breast cancer patients she witnessed at first hand.
In a blunt letter to a Welsh NHS Trust, she reveals how patients must first ring to see if a bed is available on their day of treatment, and are frequently left waiting for hours even when they are admitted.
Mother-of-three Angela Lloyd says her experiences show how a difficult situation is made even more traumatic by the lack of available beds.
In a letter sent to Hugh Ross, chief executive of the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, Mrs Lloyd outlines the delays she and other patients waiting to undergo breast cancer surgery at Llandough Hospital, Cardiff, experienced.
Mrs Lloyd, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in October, described how she rang on the day she was due to be admitted for a mastectomy, but was told there were no available beds.
The idea behind "Universal Health Care" is that insurance equals health care. National health insurance provided by the government is, of course, the preferred solution.
In the U.K., where medicine is socialized, everyone is in theory "covered" by the National Health Service (NHS) - except, possibly, some people.
Patients could be denied treatment because they smoke or are overweight, Patricia Hewitt said yesterday.
The Health Secretary insisted it was right for those whose lifestyle choices could make treatment ineffective to be refused care in some circumstances.
It is the first time a minister has explicitly endorsed the controversial policy, which has already been adopted by some health trusts.
Opposition MPs and some medical experts predict the move could encourage rationing of treatment for vulnerable groups, particularly when many NHS trusts are struggling to balance their books.
Health trusts in Suffolk were among the first to announce that obese people would be denied hip and knee replacements on the NHS.
The ruling was part of an attempt to save money locally.
The incomparable Walter Williams cuts through the single-payer rhetoric about our system:
There's a cure for our health-care problems. That cure is not to demand more government but less government. I challenge anyone to identify a problem with health care in America that is not caused or aggravated by federal, state and local governments. And, I challenge anyone to show me people dying on the streets because they don't have health insurance.
With this morning's New York Times business pages featuring single-payer propaganda from one Robert H. Frank replete with lies about national life expectancy averages somehow having anything to do with the quality of a health care system, it's good to see John Stossel over ar Real Clear Politics explaining in plain English that the problems in our health care system begin and end with government
... the problems have their roots in existing government activity. More such activity is unlikely to make things better.
The root of the problem is that few people face the true cost of medical care. Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries don't because taxpayers pay their bills. People with employer-based medical insurance don't because insurance policies shield them from it. Since they pay only small co-pays when they see a doctor, they don't ask, "Do I really need that test?" but rather, "Does my insurance cover it?"
People who don't face the full cost of their choices don't act like cost-conscious consumers. Higher prices result.
I do not agree with argument for health care federalism at the end of the article - but on the whole: all true.
A bricklayer told he will have to wait more than five months for a hernia operation at an Oxford hospital has been sent a survey asking him to rate his experiences booking his appointment.
Derek Risby, 53, is angry that staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, have time to send out questionnaires, but cannot organise the surgery that will help him get back to work.
A WEST London councillor has been told he could wait six months for dental surgery after a bungled tooth extraction.
Councillor John Hensley (Con, Ickenham) is finding getting an appointment on the NHS like pulling teeth' and has slammed the bureaucratic processes for keeping him waiting.
Richard Ralston over at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine has written an excellent editorial on the dangers inherent in the Schwarzenegger health care proposal for California that contains the following paragraph - which I think sums up the attitudes of the advocates of government-run health care nicely:
Apparently, if people need health care, we must assume that is all that matters, and it must be seized and given to them with no regard for anything or anyone else. Give everyone all the health care they want, no matter what it costs or who must be forced to provide it. Take away everything else: individual rights, private property, privacy of medical records, personal choice. A need for health care must obliterate even the concept of freedom.
and this:
Drawing on an endless source of tax revenue and borrowing, government medical care does not bother about such things as cost control or fraud - and thus we have seen a geometric expansion in government medical spending for forty years. If the government is so much more efficient than corporations, why not eliminate all private commerce and have the government nationalize and run everything? Didn't somebody try that? Did it work?
Over on his wonky web site, health care bolshevik Matthew Holt publicly chastises a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) by publishing an email exchange that this person probably thought was private. Go read it for insight into the kind of bullies who want to ration health care in the U.S.
Here's part of Mr. Holt's email to the NFIB member:
I understand that you represent your members and that their policies are what you follow. I would also humbly ask how many of your members know what share of GDP is spent on health care here versus Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, France et al...you know the answer. Those countries spend virtually 50% the amount we do on health care.
In Mr. Holt's collectivist universe, how much "we" spend on health care is an overriding concern, regardless of the wishes and intentions of the individual. Certainly, there's a lot of waste in U.S. health care due to overreliance on health insurance and government intervention into the marketplace, however, there are also good reasons that the U.S. spends more. We're a wealthy country and health care is a premium good. As income rises, health care spending rises. When we're sick, we want a definitive diagnosis. We don't mind spending more money on diagnostic tests and specialists in order to rule out minor possibilities. There are good ways to reduce health care spending and weed out waste. Outlawing private health insurance and having government ration health care by physical force - as Mr. Holt and others advocate - is not one of them.
Waiting in Pain
Here's a perfect example of how other countries manage to spend "virtually 50% the amount we do" it. They deny care by imposing global health care budgets: From today's Northern Echo newspaper in the UK: You'll have to go home - we've run out of cash
A PATIENT in so much pain he was given morphine was told by doctors that his operation had been cancelled because the hospital had run out of money.
Matthew Fowler-Jones was told he must leave his hospital bed and go home, despite being told by a consultant the operation "needed doing".
The 26-year-old, who was on a no-solids diet for three days in readiness for the surgery, was given a supply of powerful painkillers and discharged.
He was told his routine gallstone operation had been cancelled because there was no money left in the NHS kitty this financial year to pay for it.
Mr Fowler-Jones, of Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was twice admitted and discharged from the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, after suffering agonising abdominal pains over the past fortnight.
After the operation was initially cancelled, he was again admitted to the hospital in agony days later.
He was again discharged, once his condition was stabalised.
The defenders of government-run medicine are critical of the "argument by anecdote" implicit in the reporting of the constant stream of bad news stories in the English language press concerning waiting and suffering by patients under their beloved socialized medical systems. They prefer to compare health care systems using measures such as surveys of "healthiness", life expectancy averages, infant mortality rates, public opinion polls (of mostly healthy people) and so on. And then, there's their predictable moral outrage about how much we are spending on health care as they outline their plans to ration your health care.
However, observe that its nearly impossible to find comparable stories of health care rationing in the US health care system. For all our problems - and there are many - artificially created shortages and rationing is NOT one of them. Below are just a small sampling of recent news stories from Canada and the U.K. I could list many more from countries like Australia and New Zealand.
Overcrowding in the emergency ward at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster has become so bad that patients are being forced to sleep in closets, says a senior surgeon.
"There are patients that are literally in closets. They're in the nurses' lounge, where the nurses go to have coffee, there are patients in there," said Dr Bertrand Perey, the hospital's deputy chief of surgery.
A number of morbidly obese people in Saskatchewan say they are getting sick waiting for weight-loss surgery.
Right now, there are about 330 people on the waiting list and no new patients being accepted in Saskatoon, the main centre for bariatric surgery in the province.
A piano remover fears his livelihood is under threat after waiting nearly two weeks for an operation to treat a broken arm.
Mark Bliss, of Kingston Road, North Oxford, fractured his right arm on Sunday, January 21, but is still waiting for surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
The Lakin Road directors were forced to open three extra wards and use surgical beds, which led to some appointments being cancelled at the last minute.
At the start of the year, staff also saw the number of extra beds being used jump from zero to 50 in a week - making staffing difficult. Last year the hospital began reducing the number of beds which it had in wards.
The idea that one has a right to all medically necessary health care - without having any obligation to earn it - was implanted in the American psyche with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), passed in 1986, extended this logic by forcing hospitals to provide free emergency medical care to anyone who comes within 100 yards of an ER - regardless of ability or willingness to pay.
However, unlike true political rights such as the right to free speech or private property, the so-called "right to health care" has an unfortunate corollary: doctors are slaves without political rights of their own.
Many hospitals - forced by government to provide charity care - compel doctors to signup for unpaid ER duty or lose staff privileges. Doctors who respond in the middle of the night to the ER call, often end up providing free care to patients who are unable or unwilling to pay - and - they are vulnerable to malpractice lawsuits. Now, doctors at one Florida hospital are rebelling:
Thirteen of Palms West Hospital's 16 gastroenterologists quit the medical staff Thursday in a dispute over having to treat emergency patients.
The disagreement started after the Loxahatchee hospital in December required all of the specialists to see emergency patients. Most of the doctors refused unless they were paid to be on call.
[...]
Palm Beach County's medical specialists have increasingly avoided treating emergency patients out of a fear of being sued and not getting paid by an uninsured patient. The perceived threat of a lawsuit has become a bigger fear as most specialists in the county have opted to not buy malpractice insurance because of its high costs.
Gastroenterologists, who typically spend most of their time performing colonoscopies to detect colon cancer, handle internal bleeding and gallbladder attacks among their emergency duties.
But many have stopped or reduced working in the ER because today they do nearly all their non-emergency cases in their own outpatient surgery centers. As a result, the specialists no longer need hospitals for their livelihood.
Here's just a sampling of stories from the English language press in the last week that tell the same stories over and again: bed shortages, cancelled operations, restricted OR hours, long waits for diagnostic tests and appointments with specialists.
A frustrated Ulsterman today begged health chiefs to save the life of his desperately ill mother - two months after she flew back home from Australia to get urgent cancer treatment.
A statement from 'Rosie' has underlined that a seven month waiting list for an investigative procedure is the cause of her terminal bowel cancer. She reiterated that, contrary to recent reports - there was no failure on behalf of her GP to refer her for a colonoscopy. She says "I have terminal cancer because I was put on a waiting list. I don't blame any individual at any of the hospitals where I was treated. It is Government policy to put me on a list and the failure to save my life lies solely with the Minister for Health, Mary Harney and the Government.
Nearly 7,000 patients across Northern Ireland are waiting for scans to find out if they have potentially life-threatening conditions such as cancer, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today.
It is understood some patients are waiting months for a scan.
TONY Blair came under fire this week over delays in operations at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital aimed to help Norfolk Primary Care Trust tackle its £50 million debt.
The PCT told the hospital to defer all routine operations from December 1 until after the new financial year, meaning patients will have to wait for up to the maximum 20 weeks.
When high-school teacher Bob McDonnell faced a staggering 21/2-year wait for hip-replacement surgery in Ontario, he went to the popular medical tourist destination of Chennai, India, where he received first-rate care at a Third World price.
Sault MP Tony Martin said today hiring more doctors, nurses and nurse practioners will reduce wait times for children surgeries more effectively than a new government plan that will take years to create a wait-times database.
Christine Lord, who has been in remission for 18 months, says 300 fewer appointments were available last year when the number of visits by Sydney oncologists were reduced from once weekly to twice monthly.
She says waiting lists now stretch back to November 2005.
Canadian doctors, on the whole, are not a risk-taking bunch. Vengeful hospital administrators can cut a surgeon's allotted operating room hours even further - resulting in even longer waiting lists for that doctor's patients. However, some are speaking out:
A doctor has gone public with his concerns about the state of Sudbury Regional Hospital.
Dr. Miguel Bonin says he refuses to let his patients suffer because of these problems. He is speaking out about the hospital's old equipment, overcrowded facilities and behind-schedule capital construction project.
[...]
"I'm not afraid of anyone. The biggest price I've paid for doing what I've done is I'm being stopped in the halls to tell me to keep going and do these things, and I've so little time to start with that I don't have time to keep going."
[...]
The hospital's operating rooms are equipped with out-of-date and even dangerous equipment, he says. When he was operating in a room at the Memorial site last week, the operating table wouldn't always go up and down because the electronic components weren't working.
However, some can't take socialized medicine anymore and leave for the free market of cosmetic surgery:
Some doctors are scaling back their family practices to perform cosmetic procedures, spurring critics to ask whether the move will make current health-care waiting lists even longer.
'One of my colleagues was a family doctor but now she's doing hair transplants because ... she was getting fed up' with the health-care system.
[...]
Firm numbers are not available but hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Canadian family doctors and specialists are replacing or supplementing their medical practice with cosmetic procedures.
An Ontario cab driver was faced with this choice: Wait more than 14 weeks for cancer surgery, or travel outside of Canada and purchase the lifesaving operation he could not receive here quickly enough.
In the end, Branislav Djukic returned to the place he fled in 1995, the former Yugoslavia, seeking a better life in Canada. In Belgrade, he underwent surgery to remove a portion of his left kidney at a cost of $5,000.
[...]
"in a time of need for somebody in my dad's situation, Yugoslavia offered better and faster treatment. They could not understand that they would make you wait that long to treat a disease of such seriousness in a country such as Canada and neither could we."
In Mr. Djukic's case, he asked the Ontario government to fund a more timely cancer surgery out of the country after he was given a date in an Ontario hospital of Jan. 17, 2005 -- a wait of 14 weeks and three days.
However, if you read the whole story, you'll notice that the wait was actually much longer than 14 weeks - that was just for the surgery. From the time he noticed blood in his urine in April 2004, it was September 2004 before he was able to have all the tests necessary to make a definitive diagnosis.
The World Health Organization ranks the U.K's socialized health care system #18 in its politically inspired 2000 report which also ranks the U.S. system #37. However, how many times do you hear things like this happening in the U.S?
Growing numbers of operations are being cancelled because of a lack of sterile surgical instruments, newly released figures show.
Some Health Service trusts have seen an eight-fold increase since 2003 in the amount of patients turned away at the last minute.
Nationally 41 per cent more operations are being lost because dirty surgical instruments, or the wrong ones, are being sent to theatres.
Tory MP Grant Shapps, who uncovered the figures by using freedom of information laws, said: 'As the Government seeks ever more creative ways to dig itself out of the NHS funding crisis it has started to pressurise hospitals to cut costs by sharing instrument cleaning between hospitals.
'This is a false economy. These figures reveal a huge jump in cancelled operations simply because surgeons at the last minute are discovering that the surgical instruments still have blood on them.
'Apart from the financial cost, this new system is not working for patients who have prepared themselves to go under the knife, only then to find that their operations are cancelled at the 11th hour.'
In 2005/6 some 1,765 operations were cancelled because no sterile instruments were available at the 58 Health Service trusts who responded to requests for information.
THE daughter of a retired builder who died from cancer in his intestine has criticised University College Hospital (UCLH) for taking five days to operate on him.
St Pancras Coroner's Court was told yesterday (Thursday) that Manus Christopher McElhinney, 77, from Finsbury, died last August after his bowels blew up "like a balloon" five days after he was admitted to hospital.
His daughter, Linda Irvine, told the inquest: "Obviously, on Monday it was an emergency. His bowels were blocked, (the faeces) had nowhere to go. "His condition was quite serious and he was in extreme discomfort.
"I find it difficult to understand why my father ended up being tagged on the end of a list on Friday if it was known on Monday (that he needed surgery)." The inquest heard that the pensioner, from the St Luke's estate in Old Street, did not move his bowels for the three weeks leading up to his death.
A cancerous tumour the size of a small apple had grown in his colon and had caused a blockage, consultant Austin Obichere from UCLH told the court. He added: "Everything had blown up."
While the opponents of health care liberty line up in favor of government-run medicine - each with their own plan to coerce patients, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and taxpayers into a collective system run by bureaucrats and tightly controlled through global health care budgets - the clear and inevitable results of rationing in single-payer Canada are ignored:
ICU beds are rationed in many Canadian hospitals, forcing surgeries to be cancelled at the last minute:
Royal University Hospital postponed 44 open-heart surgeries between April and December, the Saskatoon Health Region says.
Jackie Mann, the region's executive director of acute care, said as of November 2006, 15 per cent of open-heart surgeries, such as bypass procedures and heart valve replacements, had been postponed because no intensive-care unit (ICU) beds were available for the patients to recover in.
Canadian hospitals operating on fixed global budgets have no incentive to move bed blockers out to other lower cost facilities - because they prevent the admittance of higher-cost acute-care patients (like cancer patients!) who decimate the budget:
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is cancelling dozens of operations, including those of cancer patients, as it struggles to cope with a problem faced by many hospitals across Canada: a bottleneck of patients it cannot move.
Consequently, emergency departments are overflowing, operations are being postponed and patients waiting for a bed to become available in a nursing home or rehabilitation hospital are finding that a spot is not always immediately available, worsening the logjam.
A high occupancy crisis in The Ottawa Hospital's emergency rooms is distressing patients and doctors and causing last-minute surgery cancellations.
In an e-mail sent to staff yesterday afternoon and obtained by the Citizen, the hospital's vice-president of medical affairs, quality and patient safety described the situation as "extreme."
"There have been daily meetings to manage this situation," Dr. J. R. Worthington wrote. "The surgical list for any given day and the day following are reviewed and surgeries have been cancelled."
"Cancellations have been very late and this has caused distress for the patients, their surgeons, the anesthetists and all other members of the team."
[...]
The problem means patients who have waited many months for elective surgery such as hip replacements, hernia and knee surgery, can show up at the hospital and find out their surgery has been cancelled.
"The most difficult situations for patients, which we have a great deal of empathy and sympathy (for) and understand, is when they come in to the hospital that day, they've made their arrangements and then we, effectively, because we've had so many admissions over night, we don't have a bed for them," Dr. Carruthers explained.
"That's very traumatic and it is very difficult for the patients."
Front Page Magazine has republished Leonard Peikoff's brilliant 1993 speech on the oft proclaimed "right" to health care. Here's an excerpt below (although I highly recommend reading the whole thing):
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea--which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical--it does not work--but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice.
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So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan--not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it--to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.
What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with--and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at Mcdonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights--and only these.
Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want--not to be given it without effort by somebody else.
It's unfortunate that many republicans don't understand this.
Two Metropolitan Police detectives have spoken of the struggle to save their youngest son's life by moving to New York to seek pioneering cancer treatment.
Five-year-old Jack Brown was given a one in five chance of survival by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital after being diagnosed with a rare cancer - neuroblastoma - which attacks specialised nerve cells.
He underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the hospital which pushed the disease into remission, but specialists said Jack could only receive palliative care if his cancer returned.
Yvonne and Richard Brown, sergeants at Barnet police station, have moved to Manhattan where Jack is being treated with a new cancer antibody which is his only chance of survival.
"Jack fought so hard to beat this there was no point giving up in the UK," said Mr Brown, 40.
Apparently, all the propaganda about life expectancy and infant mortality rates (which have almost nothing to do with the quality of a health care system) and the silly World Health Organization (WHO) rankings which place the U.S. health care system at #37 don't sway them. They just want to save their son's life.
If you've got cancer, a PET scan (Positron emission tomography) can be essential to determining the location and the extent of the disease. PET scans play a big role in evaluating the effectiveness of a given treatment. For example, giving conclusive evidence about whether a course of chemotherapy is working - and thus helping doctors decide whether a different therapy might be more effective.
In the U.S., PET scanners are plentiful and are routinely used in the fight against cancer. In Ontario, Canada they are rationed so severely that doctors can't even get access for training purposes:
The use of crucial cancer-detecting PET machines is so restricted in Ontario that one university must send its medical residents to the United States and elsewhere for training.
The low number of cancer patients eligible for PET screening means University of Western Ontario residents cannot obtain the experience they require. St. Joseph's Health Care in London scans as few as four patients a week, sometimes none. The rest of the time it experiments on laboratory-bred dogs and pigs.
Many health-care analysts worry that Mr. Schwarzenegger's Rube Goldberg scheme of insurance mandates will create so many failures and frustrations that adoption of a single-payer government system will be inevitable.
Schwarzenegger would expand government programs for the poor, including California's version of Medicaid - i.e., Medi-Cal. In fact, he would expand these programs so much that they would cover many Californians who aren't poor at all. Families of four making $60,000 per year - including illegal immigrants - would be eligible.
That would be dangerous: Such programs discourage people from climbing the economic ladder, because recipients lose benefits if their income rises. Expanding programs like these ensnares middle-class families in what experts call a "low-wage trap." Such programs also tend to increase the cost of privately purchased medical care and insurance; expanding them would make private options even less affordable.
But the truly audacious part is that the governor wants non-Californians to pay for it all - or most of it, anyway - a fact that he and his advisors tried to disguise.
Sally Pipes is in the National Review explaining where plans like Romney's and Schwarzenegger's will inevitably lead:
There is no possible way this ends anyway but badly. Poor people will drop care, enroll on the taxpayer's dollar, and drive up costs. Employers will face new taxes, and therefore limit the size of firms, stunting economic growth while depressing cash wages. The high-deductible plans will appear to be raw deals to many, especially if it comes at a guaranteed-issue premium. People will refuse to sign up and dodge the tax. The politicians will not have the will to enforce the individual mandate - individuals, after all, vote, write letters to the editor, and appear on sob stories on the news. Instead, they will load up the mandated coverage with extra benefits, lower deductibles and co-pays, and demonize the insurance industry when it charges market prices.
The result: Employers will be paying higher taxes, employees earning lower wages, Medicaid will be subsidizing more people, and 10 to 20 percent of Californians will still be officially counted as uninsured. Next stop: single-payer health care for America.
Italy's richest man, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, just had surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S. to install a pacemaker. Hasn't he read the 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) health care rankings that put Italy's system at #2 in the world and the U.S. a dismal #37 behind Costa Rica?
Why would a billionaire fly thousands of miles to get surgery in a country whose health care system is rated so low by WHO when he could have had his surgery in any one of the socialized health care systems of Europe that WHO ranks so highly? Perhaps, because the WHO health care rankings have little to do with healing - and everything to do with politics - make that socialism.
The 2000 WHO report based 25% of its score on the "fairness" of a country's health care financing which is measured by how much more higher-income groups pay for health care than lower-income groups. We are constantly reminded by single-payer advocates that the U.S. spends more on health care than other nations and gets less as shown by our low ranking on the WHO report. Their circular argument seems to be "we need government-run medicine because reports show that we don't have enough government-run medicine".
Berlusconi did, however, have his criticisms of the Cleveland Clinic:
ITALY's richest man has two complaints about US hospitals: bad food and ugly nurses.
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When the anaesthetist asked if he had any allergies, the Forza Italia leader quipped: "Only to communists." He was reassured: "There aren't any left here in the States."
Food and nurses aside, I wish they were right about the communists.
Ted Kennedy, the nation's most persistent backer of nationalized health care, must be smiling at the irony. Almost four decades after he first proposed the idea, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Kennedy relative by marriage, is touting his own version of universal coverage, and, if adopted, the idea could go nationwide quickly. It's no wonder critics are already dubbing the ostensibly Republican chief executive "Schwarzenkennedy."
This isn't the first time Mr. Kennedy has found a Republican to carry water for him. In 1971, after Medicare spending had increased by more than 70% in five years (although the number of people enrolled grew by only 6%), Richard Nixon declared a "health-care cost crisis" and worked with Mr. Kennedy to propose mandatory employer-provided health insurance. The idea foundered, but a modified version now has been revived by Mr. Schwarzenegger, who wants to require that every person buy health insurance, or be covered by an employer or the government.
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He insists it doesn't raise taxes, despite billions in new charges on doctors, hospitals and employers. He prefers to call the new revenue "in-lieu fees" and "coverage dividends."
The Wall Street Journal has another good editorial on the ill-advised Schwarzenegger universal health care plan:
The Governor is proposing that businesses with 10 or more employees be required to provide insurance, or else pay 4% of their taxable Social Security wages into a fund to subsidize insurance for the working uninsured. The likely reaction of many California businesses to this new and costly mandate: outsourcing to Nevada, or India.
Mr. Schwarzenegger goes far beyond the Romney plan in proposing to help pay for his scheme by taxing hospitals 4% and doctors 2% of their gross revenues. That's right, institutions operating at or near a loss would have to pay the tax. So California doctors could soon be spending more time with their accountants than with patients--assuming they can afford to keep their practices running at all.
I'm also hearing through the grapevine that the plan subsidizes health club memberships for Californians.
Doctors are not servants of their patients, they are traders like everyone else in a free society and they should bear that title proudly considering the crucial importance of the services they offer.
I interviewed a doctor in British Columbia, Canada last week who complained that his hospital did not have a budget for vascular stents. The alternative, of course, is invasive bypass surgery under general anesthesia which can be much more dangerous for elderly patients in an already weakened state. So it doesn't surprise to read about obsolete endoscopic surgery equipment in Canada:
Dr. Ronald Witzke has withdrawn his surgical services from Brooks and expects other surgeons will be doing the same in the near future.
The reason he says is that surgeons have been working with outdated endoscopic surgery equipment and newly instituted patient records procedures that he says are inappropriate for a surgical clinic.
[..]
"The department of general surgeons for the region sent a letter to the Chief of Staff for the region in November with this specific concern," he said.
He said included in that letter was the fact that the Brooks endoscopy equipment was aged and hasn't been replaced despite numerous attempts.
Endoscopy is a diagnostic medical procedure used to evaluate the interior surfaces of an organ by inserting a small tube into the body.
"It is nine years old and four years past its expiry date. There have been a lot of technical advances in the field with high definition and various other additions to the equipment and it is time to upgrade," he said.
WEIGHING 34 stone, Terry Owston hoped drastic stomach surgery could turn his life around.
But now the 55-year-old has joined those who have been thrown off the waiting list for obesity operations at York hospital.
Terry, from Rillington, near Malton, is the latest victim of a controversial decision by cash-strapped primary care trust bosses to suspend the surgery for patients across the county while it conducts a review.
Terry said he was desperate for the operation which was his final hope in rescuing him from a serious weight problem.
But now he has been told the surgery has been suspended and he has been removed from the waiting list he has been on since September.
THIS man fears he could be dead by 60 unless he gets life-saving obesity surgery, but health bosses have just knocked him off the waiting list.
Dad-of-two Philip Cooper, 40, from Woodthorpe, in York, has been waiting for a gastric band operation at York hospital for two years.
At 20 stone, he is clinically obese and also suffers from diabetes. A surgeon told him that, without the operation, Mr Cooper was unlikely to live to 60. But with it, he would have a chance of living another 15 or 20 years beyond that.
But now Mr Cooper has been hit with a devastating blow after receiving a letter telling him that the debt-ridden North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) had suspended the operation he longs for - and that he would be removed from the waiting list.
He said: "I want it, I need it, I want to see my kids, I want to see my grand-kids," he said.
ONE of Essex's biggest hospitals has been ordered to see fewer patients because of the cash crisis in the NHS.
Colchester General Hospital has been told that the North East Essex Primary Care Trust (PCT) cannot afford to pay for it to continue treating people at the current rate.
More than 1,500 people will now be seen later than they could have been because the PCT has ruled that non-emergency patients must wait at least 16 weeks before going to the hospital.
I'm currently traveling in the Great White Health Care Utopia of Canada interviewing suffering and waiting patients as well as their desperate and cynical doctors who would love to have what we have in the U.S.
Surgeons in Kelowna, B.C. spend much of their time here counseling patients who often wait years for treatment - rather than actually operating on them. The operating rooms at the Kelowna General Hospital close down at 3:30 in the afternoon.
According to a surgeon here that I talked to yesterday, Kelowna General also has "disruptive doctor" directives in place. If a surgeon persists in pressuring the hospital for OR time for one of his patients, he can find himself disciplined. How? By having his already-insufficient time in the operating room reduced further.
Government-run health care means global health care budgets. A global budget represents an arbitrary cut-off in health care spending either at the hospital or the regional health authority level. Quite different from a free market where individuals can spend more or less on a given good or service as they see fit, global budgets are the primary tool that governments use to ration health care. Currently, some UK residents are feeling the unpleasant effects of global budgets:
Patients are being denied basic operations, including treatments for varicose veins, wisdom teeth and bad backs, as hospitals try frantically to balance the books by the end of the financial year, The Times can reveal.
NHS trusts throughout the country are making sweeping cuts to services and delaying appointments in an attempt to address their debts before the end of March. Family doctors have been told to send fewer patients to hospital, A&E departments have been instructed to turn people away, and a wide range of routine procedures has been suspended.
In one example of the cash-saving strategies, seen by The Times, a primary care trust in Yorkshire has told hospitals that they will not be paid for some non-essential operations, while patients will not be given a hospital appointment in under eight weeks.
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No patients will be given a hospital appointment in less than eight weeks, and none admitted for elective surgery unless they have waited a minimum of 12 to 16 weeks. Those treated quicker will not be paid for.
The trust also announced the immediate suspension of treatments for varicose veins, wisdom teeth, X-rays of the back, operations for carpal tunnel syndrome, bunions, arthroscopy of the knee, and grommets for the ear, among others. "We fully appreciate the difficulties that the introduction of these measures entail," Dr Soo-Chung's letter says. "However, the financial position of the PCT is such that there is absolutely no alternative to this programme if we are to avoid even more difficult decisions in the near future."
Yesterday, we saw the results of the widespread perpetuation of a profound untruth: that there is a "crisis" created by the fact that many Americans don't have health insurance. A so-called moderate Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposedforcing people to buy health insurance while imposing special taxes on doctors, hospitals, small businesses and everyone else. I'll have much more to say later about his proposal, however it's perhaps useful to consider some recent analysis by Devon Herrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis:
Despite claims that there is a health insurance crisis in the United States, the proportion of Americans without health coverage has changed little in the past decade. The increase in the number of uninsured is largely due to immigration and population growth.
Certainly, we can all agree that smoking is a very harmful habit and that smokers are intentionally damaging their own health. However, when government-run health care systems begin refusing medical care to smokers, important personal liberties are at stake. It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to foresee similar policies towards obesity, alcohol use or a host of other personal habits deemed "unhealthy" by the health care "czars". Consider this article from Science Daily:
Last year a primary care trust announced it would take smokers off waiting lists for surgery in an attempt to contain costs.
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Denying operations is justified for specific conditions, argues Professor Matthew Peters from the Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Australia.
Professor Peters says that smoking up to the time of any surgery increases cardiac and pulmonary complications, impairs tissue healing, and is associated with more infections.
These effects increase the costs of care and also mean less opportunity to treat other patients, he writes. In healthcare systems with finite resources, preferring non-smokers over smokers for a limited number of procedures will therefore deliver greater clinical benefit to individuals and the community.
He believes that, as long as everything is done to help patients to stop smoking, it is both responsible and ethical to implement a policy that those unwilling or unable to stop should have low priority for, or be excluded from, certain elective procedures.
While thousands of people wait in surgery queues, the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia has been allowing a new operating room to go unused for four years. Hospitals in Australia's government-run health care system have a disincentive to operate on patients. Because each patient represents a cost against a global budget provided by the government, an unused OR is no problem - unless you're the patient.
AN operating theatre in one of Queensland's busiest hospitals sits idle four years after being built, while waiting lists for surgery grow.
The purpose-built "E1" theatre has never been used since the new Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane was rebuilt in 2002. The State Government is considering a bid from the Australian Medical Association Queensland to set up a brokerage system to cut waiting lists by arranging for patients to have publicly-funded surgery at private hospitals.
Meanwhile, the operating theatre on the fourth floor of the hospital in Woolloongabba continues to gather dust. After being contacted by The Sunday Mail, a Princess Alexandra spokesman said the "E1" operating theatre would be brought into use next month. But Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said it was "a travesty" that it had taken so long to begin operations in the theatre while thousands of people were on waiting lists.
Remember the Trabant? The pride of the communist East German auto industry? Introduced in 1959, it hardly changed in 30 years. Its noisy, smoky two-stroke engine was a poor performer. It had no fuel gauge - just a dipstick - and oil had to be added to the gas at every fueling. Once the Berlin Wall fell, it was history.
The Trabant was the product of a "single-payer" automotive industry. The East German government was the sole payer for its citizen's automobiles. There was no "wasteful duplication" in the form of competition. Administrative costs and paperwork were minimal. There were no advertising costs, no large salaries for CEOs - and no profits. Unnecessary and expensive new features that people didn't really need were not added. As a result, spending on automobiles as a percentage of GDP was kept very low.
If this sounds a lot like the "single-payer" propaganda that we continue to hear, it's no coincidence. The advocates of government-run health care are typically ignorant of economics - and in the case of the Trabant - history itself. Yet they are itching to have governmental control of our doctors and hospitals and to ration health care as they see fit.
Oh yea - and the wait for a Trabant? Up to 15 years!
Democratic presidential candidate and poverty-pimp John Edwards thinks that "universal health care" will be a winning campaign issue. However, as Michael Bates at the Canada Free Press explains, we'd all be the losers.
We're close enough to easily see the experience of our friends to the north in Canada. And what an experience it has been.
Under Canada's Medicare, as it's called, there are no user fees for medical services. Everything is paid for with tax dollars. Moreover, it's against the law to privately pay for major services. So almost everyone has to stand in line.
The Fraser Institute, an independent public policy organization there, has done extensive research on the Canadian system. It's concluded that although the country spends more on health care than almost every other developed nation, Canadian citizens endure long waiting times to be treated and inferior access to both medical technology and physicians.
In October, the Fraser Institute turned out its sixteenth annual waiting list survey. The 2006 findings are dismal enough to make even Mr. Edwards' well coiffed hair stand on end.
The median waiting time between referral by a general practitioner and treatment for general surgery patients was over ten weeks. For gynecology it was 14 weeks and for ophthalmology it's 27 weeks. If you're an orthopedic surgery patient, you've got plenty of time to think about your upcoming procedure, more than 40 weeks. Radiation oncology patients have to wait five weeks.
He isn't a doctor, and doesn't own a private clinic. What his one-room operation does do is connect patients who don't want to endure public waiting lists with facilities that can provide speedier care -- for a price.
Supporters call his medical brokerage service a life saver. Critics say such services threaten to end health care as we know it.
His company, Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., was at the centre of a swirl of controversy in the fall, after the public learned he was selling private bookings on publicly owned MRI machines at two Vancouver hospitals, allowing his clients to jump the health-care queue.
The British Columbia health ministry halted the practice in September and then earlier this month ordered that the two hospitals refund all the fees they had collected over several years. But Health Minister George Abbott stopped short of altogether banning medical brokers, saying that such firms don't necessarily violate the Canada Health Act.
However, Mr. Baker isn't shy about his intention to speed the emergence of two-tier health care, or his belief that his business does operate outside of the legal boundaries of medicare.
"I have no scruples whatsoever about breaking the Canada Health Act," he says. "It's a form of civil disobedience."
Alice Edge, BC Health Coalition
Most amusing - and sad - are the illogical words of one Alice Edge who is quoted in the article:
The opponents of two-tier medicine say his altruistic notions are simply misguided. "Maybe his intentions are good, but it's that whole thing of making money off of other people's misery," says Alice Edge, co-chair of the BC Health Coalition.
Our course Ms. Edge benefits everyday from the self-interest of an array of businesses that provide her with a comfortable existence where food, shelter and transportation are within the easy grasp of most people. To think that health care is somehow different - that the laws of supply and demand do not apply to medicine as they do to every other human need - is incredible. The economic illiteracy of many on the political left is a well-known phenomenon - however, at a certain point, one has to question the motivations of people like Ms. Edge - and wonder whether it really is about health care at all.
The word about my latest viral video, A Short Course in Brain Surgery is spreading. Since its release on December 5, it has been viewed nearly 25 thousand times on YouTube alone - and since Christmas day, the video has been viewed there nearly 17 thousand times.
Thanks to Michelle Malkin who incorporated more than half of the video into her daily web cast on December 15, tens of thousands of other viewers - whose numbers I can't easily track - have seen the video. I'm also hearing that Walter Williams, who guest hosted the Rush Limbaugh show last Friday, mentioned our efforts here favorably. Thanks guys!
Looking forward to 2007, more viral videos on the way! As the enemies of freedom have become so emboldened that they are able to tell lies about our health care system without worry of exposure, expect to find a healthy dose of rationality and truth here.
JT Thompson lists the coercive threats that provided the teeth in HillaryCare:
* $5,000 for refusing to join the government mandated health plan.
* $5,000 for failing to pay premiums on time.
* 15 years to doctors who receive "anything of value" in exchange for helping patients short-circuit the bureaucracy.
* $50,000 for unauthorized patient treatment.
* $100,000 a day for drug companies that improperly filed federal claims.
It's common for the advocates of government-run medicine to deny that rationing of medical care will occur in their proposed heath care utopias. However, if you read their blogs, it's all there.
Ezra Klein
Young collectivist Ezra Klein likes Democratic Senator Ron Wyden's proposal for "Universal Health Care" because of what's hidden from view: the inevitable rationing of medical care:
... it's my read that the plan enables more serious cost containment attempts in the future, if they prove necessary.
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Cost containment through rationing or price controls will trigger hostility and opposition on an epic scale, and getting there, if need be, sneakily, isn't a bad idea.
Matthew Holt
Sneaky indeed. However, whereas Ezra Klein is a practiced liar about the U.S health care system, Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog is more honest (in this instance). He has no problem in stating that "we" should have just let Gerald Ford die last summer. In his moral universe, enlightened health care czars make collective decisions about who lives and who dies without regard to the rights of individuals.
My guess is that over the last 12 months of his life well in excess of $100,000 was spent on his health care. And that money probably extended his life by three months at most. Now for all we know they may have been the most wonderful three months ever for him and his family, but I'm inclined to think that if he'd died in the summer, his family would have been equally fine with it, and the nation wouldn't have felt any differently about him. But the cost of extending life an extra year in this type of case is probably around $400,000.
How can that possibly have been money worth spending? The answer is that it cannot have been. And that is where the money is in our system which could pay for all the pre-natal care for uninsured mums, immunizations for sick kids, and procedures for uninsured 50 year olds that we "can't afford."
Paul Krugman has saved the Christmas day slot on his editorial calendar for an ugly attack on wealth and achievement disguised as holiday concern for the poor. The New York Times' leading class warrior chastises the Bush administration for not aping the social welfare policies of Great Britain. He prefers that the poverty level be calculated relative to total national wealth so that there will always be people living below the "poverty" line - no matter what their standard of living:
And there's no excuse for our lack of progress. Just look at what the British government has accomplished over the last decade.
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Britain's poverty rate, if measured American-style - that is, in terms of a fixed poverty line, not a moving target that rises as the nation grows richer - has been cut in half since Labor came to power in 1997.
... and he prefers to pay the poorest and most unproductive members of society to have more children than they can afford:
Britain's child benefit is more generous than America's child tax credit, and it's available to everyone, even those too poor to pay income taxes.
But, he saves the best for later: one of his recurring colossal lies about the health care system in the U.K:
And don't forget that Britain's universal health care system ensures that no one has to fear going without medical care ...
In actuality, patients in the U.K's National Health Service (NHS) have plently to fear when it comes to getting medical care as these recent headlines demonstrate:
A disabled mother who is waiting for groundbreaking surgery has had her operation repeatedly cancelled because of a shortage of critical-care beds.
Anne Woods, 49, who has endured nine hip replacement operations in 15 years, has been admitted to Bradford Royal Infirmary four times in the last seven weeks for orthopaedic surgery.
But each time the operation has been cancelled on the day it should have taken place.
Patients in some areas who need hip replacements and other orthopaedic operations are still having to wait more than two years for NHS treatment, figures show.
Almost one in four waits longer than 12 months for an operation after referral by their GP. For 3 per cent, the delay is twice that.
The average wait is 40 weeks - ten weeks longer than across all specialties.
This past April, Vancouver resident Dr. Paul Tinari became the first Canadian man to have a heath-care-funded foreskin restoration. When he was eight years old, doctors at his school performed an operation without his consent. After years of painful erections, and frequent infections, Dr. Tinari -- with the support of his doctor and psychiatrist -- successfully sued, and as a result, the B.C. Health Ministry paid for 90 per cent of the $12,000 operation. Dr. Tinari says he hopes that it will set a precedent for legal action that will eventually end the practice of infant circumcision all together.
Marcia Angell and the other assorted nuts and socialists over at the Physicians for a National Health Plan are a threat to your health. Richard Epstein, in the Los Angeles Times shows how in an article that should be read by every American:
THE PHARMACEUTICAL industry is getting bad press. Recent books by Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Jerome Kassirer, another former editor of the journal, have harshly condemned the industry for recklessness, insensitivity and all-consuming greed.
[...]
Nonetheless, critics like Angell and Kassirer are absolutely wrong to portray the nation's big drug companies as heartless, avaricious behemoths that act in whatever manner they choose and always get their way. The truth is, the pharmaceutical industry is too heavily regulated. Its big problem today is not that it's free to run roughshod over the needs of consumers, but that it operates in a hostile and excessive regulatory environment that frustrates sound business decision-making and keeps down pharmaceutical company share prices in the stock market.
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We must be careful not to mistake price controls for a cure when they are in fact a disease. Let our new reformist Congress beware.
Somewhere in Sheelagh Nolan's body was a cancer that had spread from her thyroid and taken hold elsewhere. Where it had travelled was a mystery - one that could only be solved through a PET scan. With no such machine of its own, the Nova Scotia government paid for Ms. Nolan to undergo a scan at an Ontario hospital in May, 2004.
Ms. Nolan, then only 41 and the wife of former Nova Scotia Liberal leader Danny Graham, was grateful for the scan but troubled by an injustice: Her provincial government paid twice for her to have scans at St. Joseph's Health Care in London [,Ontario - ed.]- but Ontario patients in her situation did not have the same access to the high-tech machines. That's because hospitals were limited in the types of cancer patients they could scan.
"This particular issue, the fact that Ontario, a relatively well-off province, was not providing this service to Ontario patients for her was unconscionable," said Mr. Graham, speaking about his wife's care.
In Canada, in fact, no other technology promises cancer patients such inequitable access as PET scanners, and, among provinces that have them, Ontario is the most restrictive of all.
Its use of the scanners is so tightly controlled that when London doctors have been unable to fill their half of the PET/CT slots with cancer patients, researchers used the empty spaces to do experiments on laboratory-bred animals.
A common response from the advocates of socialized medicine to my recent video A Short Course in Brain Surgery has been that cases like Lindsay McCreith's are an anomaly and that so-called "single-payer" systems do not severely ration medical care in a way that causes widespread suffering. The press - whether in Canada, the U.K., Australia or New Zealand - give lie to that claim on a weekly - and sometimes daily - basis.
Bob Norburn, Canadian in Waiting
Most suffering is private, however a few take their cases to the media - and these few form a continuous stream of stories in the press that show the true face of government-run medicine for all who care to see:
A P.E.I. man who has been waiting months for cancer care took his concerns to the legislature Thursday.
Bob Norburn of Charlottetown was diagnosed with prostate cancer four months ago. The 59-year-old aerospace engineer has seen an oncologist but continues to wait for critical tests.
Norburn believes that while he waits, his cancer is spreading.
"I am not prepared to die quietly, I am just not going to fade away," Norburn told The Guardian.
"I'm not getting any care. I'm not getting any medication. I'm not getting any treatment plan. I'm told to come back in two to three months time and we'll see how you are now. It's not an ingrown toenail that might grow out.
"This is getting a greater grip on me every day that I wake up. Every day I wake up I've got more cancer than I had yesterday."
[...]
Norburn's rugged exterior shields the fear he holds inside.
When asked if he was scared about his future, Norburn's eyes fill with tears.
Here's an interesting item that I had missed in my earlier post about British National Health Service spending priorities which cater to the non-sick majority of voters: NHS blows millions on removing tattoos.
THE National Health Service spent tens of millions of pounds removing nearly 200,000 tattoos last year, according to figures released by the Department of Health last week.
Rosie Winterton, the health minister, said in a Commons written answer that doctors had carried out the procedure, involving either skin grafts or lasers, on 187,063 tattoos.
The figure has astonished MPs and consultants who fear NHS funds are being spent on trivial surgery while patients are denied potentially life-saving drugs and staff are laid off.
Even conservative estimates of the cost of removing a small tattoo under anaesthetic on the NHS put the bill for 2004-05 at 37m [pounds], but some consultants suggested a figure of 300m [pounds].
HUNDREDS of Scottish cancer patients are still being forced to wait months for treatment, and ministers admitted yesterday that they had no idea when the problem would be solved.
[...]
in one case, a patient was left waiting 265 days - nearly nine months.
Susy Horna spent four pain-filled days in Surrey Memorial Hospital waiting for an operation on her broken leg.
[...]
"You can't eat for 12 hours before surgery, so I didn't have anything to eat from Wednesday to Saturday," Horna said yesterday from her hospital bed, recovering from her Saturday operation. "The only thing they offer you is morphine."
As waitlists grow ever longer, surgical tourism has become an option for many Canadians who are in pain and frustrated with the country's chronically overburdened medical system.
ANGRY cancer patient Dennis Burke yesterday branded the NHS a shambles after a hospital cancelled his appointment 48 times in a row.
Dennis, 68, who is in remission from bowel cancer, spent 14 months trying to get a consultation after his GP referred him to hospital. He said: "I am absolutely fed-up with them messing me around.
"What's the point in my GP telling me to go to hospital if I can't get an appointment?
"I have had to put up with 48 appointments with an NHS doctor being cancelled in a row. It is a disgrace."
A WOMAN has spoken about why she opted for an MRI scan in Scandinavia rather than waiting for one in Wales
[...]
The 55-year-old, ... travelled the 715 miles for a contrasting MRI scan after being told she faced an 18-month wait for the same diagnostic procedure on the NHS in Wales.
The dire state of funding at our hospitals was laid bare today when it emerged a scanner designed to ease pressure on the N&N has not been used since it was installed six months ago.
The delay was today blamed on a lack of money to employ radiographers to operate it and the need to test it fully.
[...]
North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb said: "It is not just lack of radiographers that is the problem - it is the lack of money to employ them."
"It has been excruciating and frustrating that the MRI scanner has sat there unused for so long, and even when it is used it will only be for one session a week. The hospital trust has had a bad deal from the Government. I will continue to encourage them to find ways to get the scanner in use full time and I know the hospital authority is keen to do that."
The scanner was moved from the N&N to Cromer and District Hospital in May to ease pressure at the N&N, where people were waiting up to 25 weeks for a scan.
When doctors told Stuart Shaw he needed a hip replacement he was faced with a six-month wait or a 9,000 [pound. bill from a private hospital. Suffering excruciating pain, the 67-year-old decided to travel to India instead. He paid less than 4,000 [pounds] for the operation, including his travel expenses and five weeks in hospital.
Reports that 12 women have had vital breast cancer surgery delayed due to bed shortages at the Mater Hospital in Dublin are 'very disturbing', the Labour Party has said.
Yesterday morning, 62-year-old Vincent Mays and his family were shattered to learn that his triple bypass surgery had been cancelled because of a lack of beds - for the fourth time in six weeks.
The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) rations specialists, hospital beds, surgeries, devices and drugs. The relatively few people who need serious medical care are often treated in a cruel and callous manner. However, many among the healthy majority actually like their government-run medical system. - And NHS spending priorities are reflective of a system that caters to the healthy majority at the expense of the truly sick and injured minority.
Cosmetic surgery (including liposuction, nose jobs & breast enhancements)
Books of short stories and poetry
A soap-opera for the Asian community
Programs that teach seniors the right way to wear slippers
Boxing gloves
And more:
Aside from the dancing lessons, there are many local acts of madness that cause outrage. NHS South-West managers have spent nearly 400,000 [pounds] on sculpture for their mental health units and then lavished a further 100,000 [pounds] on research into whether anybody liked it.
[...]
In April, NHS Tayside produced a four-page guide catchily entitled Good Defecation Dynamics. "Potty Training for Grown-ups" might have been a more precise title. It contained the vital advice that one should sit up straight and keep the mouth open - and "don't forget to breathe".
Undoubtedly part of the reason Europeans, Canadians and citizens from many OECD countries are happy with single-payer health insurance systems has to do with a simple fact. Most of them are not sick and in need of care. At the point of service, national health insurance makes care virtually free. The politics of medicine dictates that much of the expenditure takes place where consumed by the bulk of the population. Where the flaws of single-payer health insurance systems are most apparent is where expensive intervention is needed by the few who are very ill.
[...]
Why are British patients so satisfied with the NHS? There appear to be two major reasons: (l) the typical British patient has far lower expectations and much less knowledge about medicine than the typical American patient; and (2) most British patients apparently believe that they are "getting something for nothing."
And finally, this telling anecdote from Goodman and Herrick's paper(*):
Just how the perception of getting something for nothing affects British attitudes toward what most Americans would regard as intolerable defects in the health service was vividly illustrated by the experience of an American congressman on a trip with a group to examine the NHS first hand. He met a young woman with substantial facial scars received in an accident. Although the woman wanted plastic surgery for her face, she said, "I've been waiting eight years for treatment, but they tell me I'm going to be able to have surgery within a year." Yet when the congressman asked her what she thought of the NHS, her reply was, "Oh, it's a wonderful system we have in Britain. You know, our medical care is all free."
In less than 72 hours, our new video A Short Course in Brain Surgery has been viewed nearly 4000 times. Not bad for a film about health care policy. The web video revolution is in its infancy, however there's no doubt where things are heading. Hollywood and the mainstream media are losing their near-monopoly on the dissemination of ideas via film. Advocates of liberty should pick up this weapon and wield it effectively.
What I attempt to illustrate with films about health care policy is that socialized medicine is not only impractical - but immoral. Conservatives who try to fight the advance of government-run medicine in any other way are doomed to failure. If a majority of people believe that a health care system run by politicians is compassionate and noble - there is no way to stop it.
Despite the widespread suffering inflicted on the sick and injured by collectivized medicine, its advocates are undeterred. An extreme form of egalitarianism which reduces all men and women to charity cases and wards of the state is their goal - and a concern with "health" is truly secondary.
On a lighter note, an unhinged Toronto lefty has created a touching tribute to this author (below). Enjoy!
I often use this blog to chronicle the plight of unfortunate patients in English-speaking countries (Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand) with government-run health care systems whose surgeries are cancelled at the last minute. The desperation of these people speaks for itself. However, it's not often that we're able to see the situation from the viewpoint of the doctors - once proud, independent professionals - now frustrated civil servants. This excerpt from an article in a U.K. magazine New Statesman, written by an anonymous NHS doctor, is a warning we should heed:
This week, managers decided that 26 surgical beds must be closed to save money for the trust. This was implemented overnight and the beds physically removed from the ward.
These same people oversee the waiting lists. At no point did anyone see fit to inform the patients who had been asked to come in for surgery that there would be no beds for them. The patients duly turned up at an ungodly hour to have their blood taken and their consent forms filled in by me. They then had to wait for hours before being told that their operations had been cancelled because no beds could be found. Naturally, it is the doctors and nurses who have to explain and apologise. Managers are never on the wards and never take calls: "I'm sorry, she's in a meeting. Can I take a message for you?"
When I worked in neurosurgery, I had to clerk for cancer patients with brain tumours who were being admitted for scheduled surgery. The psychological build-up to something like this - having to sign a form acknowledging that you wish to proceed despite a substantial risk of dying on the table - is something that few can appreciate. Every week, one such patient would have their operation cancelled on the morning of surgery because their bed had been filled overnight by a drunk or by a nervous wreck with a headache admitted from A&E, courtesy of the priority given to admitting patients from casualty, however well, because they were in danger of breaching the government's four-hour-wait target.
Michael Huffington over at the far-left rant site Huffington Post (of all places) has written a compelling first-person account of his apparent victory over prostate cancer at age 59. His advice? Get regular PSA tests and digital exams:
The reason that I wrote this blog is to help spread the message that it is very important for all men over 50 to have a PSA and a DRE every year. If there is a family history of prostate cancer, it is a good idea to start when you are 40 years old. And as soon as the PSA starts going significantly above what it had been in years past, I would suggest you consider getting the test every six months. But PSA is not totally accurate as is evidenced in my case. My PSA has always been normal, and often better than average. Yet I still had prostate cancer. So a digital rectal exam is imperative. That is what led the doctors to suggest a biopsy for me.
The bottom line is don't wait when you notice an aberration in your PSA score or a firmness of the prostate is noted. Move expeditiously and find out what is going on. If you catch cancer early there is a very good chance you will live a full life. Not only will that be good for you, but for your kids, wives, partners, friends and every one else who you love.
How ironic that the all the "single-payer" boosters over there at the Huffington Post don't even realize that he would not have this option in a socialized health care system like the one in the U.K. Here's a snapshot of a web page from the British National Health Service (NHS) which spells it out pretty clearly:
Our new film, A Short Course in Brain Surgery (run time 5:36), shows the callousness of "single-payer", government-run health care systems as practiced in Ontario, Canada. It highlights the plight of Lindsay McCreith, an Ontario man with a cancerous brain tumor who went to Buffalo, NY to receive the timely medical care that is rationed in his home country.
Stephen Moore has a good review of David Gratzer's new book "The Cure" over at the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal. I've read Dr. Gratzer's book and highly recommend it. My favorite part of Moore's review:
To complain about the cost of heart surgery or cancer treatment by comparing it to the inflation-adjusted price in the 1960s or '70s is to miss the point: You died 30 years ago, and you live today. The cost of my leg surgery would have been a lot cheaper in the 1960s, but I wouldn't be able to play tennis or even run after the surgical repair was done, as I can now. How much is it worth to a family with a child who has leukemia to be able to treat her and give her a full life? The families I know who have seen their children recover say that they would have given up everything they own for today's miracle cures. Yet it's become a great American pastime for patients and politicians to whine about the "high cost of drugs" and other treatments that save lives.
Left-wing health care activist Don McCanne (of Physicians for a National Health Program) seems to have his own definition of "insurance":
How many times have you heard the opponents of health reform say that insurance should not pay for an oil change for your automobile, nor for a bag of potato chips at the supermarket? They contend that the only purpose of insurance is to indemnify an individual against catastrophic financial loss.
Sorry Don, but I think what you're advocating is socialism - not insurance. Wikipedia has, I think, a pretty standard definition:
Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of catastrophic financial loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a potential loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium and duty of care.
And you've just got to love how he characterizes opposition to socialism as "opposition to health reform". To truly reform the American health care system would mean to remove the source of most problems: government. Instead, he and his group advocate a total government takeover of our health care system.
Yeah, yeah, I know, Don: it's not socialism - you just want government to pay the bills (and decide who gets what medical care - and when - and if - and how - regardless of their own wishes or how long they wait, or how much pain they're in, or how high our taxes go).
Proponents of government-run health care systems constantly make comparisons between life expectancy rates in the U.S. and other countries. The implication is that the quality of a nation's health care system plays a large role in determining longevity - and that our health care system comes up short.
However, the quality of a health care system is a small factor in the complex mix of factors that determine overall life expectancy for an entire nation. Ethnicity and cultural attitudes play a much larger role. People also vary greatly in the value that they place on their own lives. Many consciously choose to live a shorter life - and there's little that medicine can do about it - as this NY Times article illustrates: (subscription required)
No question, John Johnson is a doctor's nightmare.
Speaking from the easy chair where he spends his days in a small wooden house near this small Appalachian town, his left trouser leg folded by a safety pin where a limb was lost to diabetes, he lighted another cigarette.
Mr. Johnson, 61 and a former garbage collector, takes insulin and goes to a clinic once a month for diabetes checkups. Taxpayers foot the bill through Medicaid, the federal-state health coverage program for the poor.
But when doctors urged him to mind his diet, "I told them I eat what I want to eat and the hell with them."
"I've been smoking for 50 years - why should I stop now?" he added for good measure. "This is supposed to be a free world."
We constantly hear about the "crisis" of 46 million uninsured Americans. The implication being, of course, that health insurance equals medical care. Canada has universal coverage by way of a "single-payer", government-run system. However, having a right to government-supplied health care is not the same as actually getting it!
In British Columbia, desperate Canadians flee to the U.S. for life-saving surgery while the politicians who administer the health care system have other priorities:
The provincial and federal health ministries will be keeping a close eye on a new privately operated urgent-care centre when it opens its doors in Vancouver next week.
The urgent-care unit of the privately operated False Creek Surgical Centre is not due to open until Dec. 1, but as word got out Friday morning, it immediately attracted widespread attention, including that of the provincial and federal health ministers.
[...]
... [Federal Health Minister] Clement has asked provincial authorities to make sure the centre conforms with the Canada Health Act.
("Officials to watch private clinic", Vancouver Sun, Maurice Bridge, 11/25/06)
Rick Baker, Timely Medical
Canadian health authorities know how to act quickly when someone attempts to make money by providing private health care services, however they are very slow to respond to the cries for help from their constituents. Shirley Healey of British Columbia was certainly close to death due to a 99% blocked mesenteric artery until she contacted Rick Baker at Timely Medical Alternatives:
Shirley Healey has a $41,000 US bill from a hospital stay in Bellingham, but after having her surgery cancelled twice in Kelowna -- with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again -- she has no regrets about going to the U.S., because her health has been restored.
[...]
A few weeks ago Healey's Bellingham surgery restored circulation to arteries in her stomach and intestines which had severe blockages. According to the Society for Vascular Surgery, mesenteric ischemia is a serious condition requiring urgent or emergency attention.
[...]
After contacting Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives, she said she got a call from Craig Knight, an assistant deputy in the health ministry, who assured her he would look into her case. She assured him she would travel to Vancouver or anywhere else she could get the surgery without fear of being cancelled again.
"I never heard from him again," said Healey, who has so far paid for half the cost of the U.S. surgery which she is convinced saved her life.
"When I was in the recovery area, Dr. Coletti said to me, 'lady, you were starving to death. You were hanging on by a thread.'"
Healey said she assumes he meant that her arteries were starved of blood and oxygen, but she also was starving since she had lost 22 kilograms in a year due to all the vomiting and diarrhea associated with her illness.
("B.C. patient seeks help with U.S. bill", Vancouver Sun, Pamela Fayerman, 11/27/06)
George Abbott
If there's anything the least bit amusing about Ms. Healey's story, it's the response of the provincial Health Minister George Abbott:
Health Minister George Abbott said in an interview that it is always regrettable when surgeries get bumped.
"But I assure you it is the exception, not the rule, and unfortunately, as in this case, it happens to the same patient more than once."
("B.C. patient seeks help with U.S. bill", Vancouver Sun, Pamela Fayerman, 11/27/06)
Mr. Abbott's office was informed about Ms. Healey's desperate condition long before she decided to go to the U.S.
"Single-Payer" health care zealot George Smitherman - the Health Minister of Ontario, Canada - demands that citizens wait in long lines for appointments with specialists, diagnostic imaging and surgery rather than allow them to access private medical care and insurance. However, Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives in Vancouver is helping some desperate Canadians stand up to an unjust system:
A company that refers patients to private health-care clinics in Canada and the U.S. is trying to raise money from private hospitals to "sponsor" a threatened lawsuit against the Ontario government that it hopes could open the door to two-tier health care in Canada.
Richard Baker, president of the Vancouver-based Timely Medical Alternatives Inc., said his company wants to sue the province on behalf of a 66-year-old Newmarket man who went to Buffalo, N.Y., for an MRI and surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumour.
[...]
At the heart of Baker's potential lawsuit is Lindsay McCreith -- a man from Newmarket who said he couldn't wait for surgery in Ontario and went to Buffalo instead.
Ontario's health insurance plan is refusing to foot McCreith's $28,000 US bill because the trip wasn't pre-approved.
Mr. McCreith had a golfball-sized tumor on his brain. His appointment just to get an MRI in Canada was a four month long wait. To get surgery would have been months more. Instead, Mr. McCreith contacted Timely Medical who brought him across the border to a U.S. hospital where he got his MRI in a week - and a biopsy and surgery in another week. The diagnosis? Brain cancer. Luckily, McCreith got his surgery quickly while the cancer was a stage 2 growth.
With the coming Democratic control of Congress, now comes the threat of new initiatives to nationalize the U.S. health care system as Hillary Clinton outlines legislative priorities:
"Health care is coming back," Clinton warned, adding, "It may be a bad dream for some."
Retired milkman Walter Field learned that beds were not available on both days he was due to be admitted to the hospital in Gorleston for urgent surgery for kidney cancer last month.
The 77-year-old, from Hopton, needs to have his left kidney removed and cancerous growths cut out from the other to have any chance of stopping the disease spreading. A tube will also be inserted from the kidney to the bladder so Mr Field no longer has to use a colostomy bag.
The eight-bed intensive care unit was full on both occasions when the grandfather of two was due to be admitted and he is still waiting for another date for the operation.
"It is very frustrating, my bags have been packed and obviously I am keen to have this done as soon as possible," he said.
"My son Alan has taken time off work to travel from London to be with us and keeps having to go back."
Mr Field's wife Doreen says she is furious about the cancellations and has made a formal complaint to the hospital.
"I was fuming when I heard, and keep hoping it would all be done and finished with and instead of that our nerves are still on edge. This is making a stressful situation even worse," she added
"There is concern about elderly people taking up beds, but we are the one who have paid the most taxes to support the NHS."
Mr Field was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of September and quickly admitted to hospital to have a colostomy bag fitted and released in time to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary.
The operation was due to take place last Wednesday after the previous appointment was cancelled on October 18.
The British National Health Service has historially served as a model for socialist health care "reformers" in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. - And everywhere government-run medicine has been tried, the results have been the same: rationing of healthcare. Unfortunately, all too often care delayed is care denied.
A mother who died when a swollen gland in her neck burst was due to have a routine operation three months earlier which could have saved her life.
Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is now investigating why Ertrice Simmons, 56, of Blackbird Leys in Oxford, did not receive the operation she was promised.
The mother-of-10, of Pegasus Road, was due to undergo treatment on an enlarged thyroid in her neck in August last year. But she died at her home in November - three months later - when the thyroid gland burst.
Now, a year after her death, her daughter Annica Simmons-Bobb, of Teal Close in Greater Leys, is demanding an inquiry into why she was not treated.
A letter from the trust to Ms Simmons-Bobb said in April last year it was recommended her mother should have the operation before August 21 - but the surgery was not scheduled until the following January.
A trust spokesman said it could not explain why the operation was not carried out.
Ms Simmons-Bobb said: "I know no reason why she wasn't seen. She should still be here alive today but because of that mistake she is not.
"I want justice. I know had it been the other way round she wouldn't have just left it like that.
"I want them to admit to being responsible. Death from an enlarged thyroid is extremely rare.
The word from the recently held Toronto Film Festival where Michael Moore showed excerpts from his upcoming health care documentary 'Sicko' is that there's a line in the movie where Moore says something like "In Canada people take care of each other while in the U.S., it's 'I''ve got mine, f*ck you'". I wonder if this is what he means.
Five months after a spot was detected on his lung and three months after a biopsy confirmed it was malignant, Harald Draxler arrived at Grand River Hospital on Tuesday for lung cancer surgery.
Having had heart bypass surgery in 2000 and a stroke in 2004, the Kitchener man was anxious but psyched up for the procedure to remove a portion of his upper left lung.
He could hardly believe his ears when a nurse told him an hour before the operation that it was cancelled.
[...]
"The hardest part is that I worry that the cancer is spreading," said Harald ...
Viewers of our short film Dead Meat may remember Rick Baker, President of Timely Medical Alternatives, a Vancouver-based firm which assists desperate Canadians waiting for health care services to get help either in the U.S. or through the burgeoning private health care sector that is beginning to appear in British Columbia after years of a government heath care monopoly.
Mr. Baker is now in the midst of a swirling controversy over how MRI machines at Vancouver's St. Paul's Hospital should be used. It turns out that St. Paul's - which gets its funding from the government - has had to shut down its' MRI machines part of the time because there's not enough money in the budget to run them - even while many Canadians languish in long lines to get an MRI scan. Through an arrangement with Mr. Baker's company, St Paul's allowed Timely Medical Alternatives to use the MRIs in the off hours when they would otherwise sit idle. Mr. Baker's paying customers were able to get immediate service while St. Paul's received more revenue. It seems like a win-win situation for everyone, doesn't it? Well, not everyone would agree:
British Columbia's health minister is launching a queue-jumping investigation after patients said they were able to get faster treatment on public equipment at St. Paul's hospital in Vancouver by paying a private clinic.
Allowing private patients to receive faster treatment on public hospital equipment breaches the Canada Health Act and B.C. Health Ministry policy and could result in fines, George Abbott said Tuesday.
St. Paul's isn't the only public hospital in Canada that allows private patients to use equipment at public hospitals, said a spokesman for a Vancouver-based company that prides itself on helping patients find the treatment they need in less than 48 hours.
"We refer our clients to public hospitals in other parts of Canada," said Richard Baker, founder of Timely Medical Alternatives.
"I can't give you details because I don't want them to get in the same mess that St. Paul's has found itself in," he said, but added: "It's routinely done in Canada."
[...]
Baker estimates his referrals of private patients to St. Paul's has created enough revenue for the hospital to hire a full-time MRI technician who is able to provide 40 MRI scans a week and 2,000 a year.
A prominent feature of government-run health care is the suffering of the most vulnerable members of society: premature infants and the elderly. Socialized medical systems ration care to the most needy patients who require the most health care resources such as old people with fractured hips in the U.K.:
MORE than 200 patients with fractured hips have had operations cancelled at the ERI because theatres were over-run.
The mainly elderly patients were often forced to wait for treatment because surgeons and support staff had reached their legal working hours limit.
Some were forced to wait up to six days for surgery.
I wonder how many Americans would want to have a health care system where the number of surgeons for a given specialty is intentionally kept in short supply by government-appointed health care bureaucrats for the express purpose of limiting the number of surgeries performed. Moreover - when the patient finally receives the operation, it is performed by surgeons and support staff who are overworked and approaching legal working hour limits.
While citizens in Canada, the U.K. and elsewhere wait months and sometimes even years for a government-rationed MRI scan, Americans in Connecticut can buy an MRI scan at the local shopping mall:
Between a pedicure and hitting the sale at Kohl's or catching a movie at the Mansfield Movieplex, you can get that MRI you've been needing at East Brook Mall.
Dr. Hadeer Shaikhly, who recently stepped down as chief of radiology at Windham Hospital, has opened an outpatient center for CT scans and MRIs in East Brook Mall between the Radio Shack and Borders Express. At Windham Radiology, Shaikhly and a partner radiologist offer scanning, night and weekend appointments, no-charge second readings by an outside service, and immediate review of the results with a certified radiologist.
"Pain and disease don't wait, so why would you want to wait?" Shaikhly said about his radiology business.
The center includes comfortable seating, entrances from both the mall and the parking lot, and a plasma TV in the waiting room. While patients or their escorts wait, they can take a pager out into the mall and shop or run errands.
"We give them a little beeper. Just like the restaurants," Shaikhly said.
THE chairman of a new Worcestershire NHS trust paid to have a hip replacement operation at a private hospital, it has been revealed.
Dr Bryan Smith, who has not yet begun his job as chairman of the new Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, had his recent surgery at BUPA Southbank in Bath Road, Worcester.
NHS hip replacement patients in Worcestershire normally have to wait nine months for an operation after being referred by their GP.
First, from New Zealand where 800 patients waiting for surgery or outpatient visits have been kicked off the waiting lists and sent back to their GPs so they can start waiting all over again (and notice the explicit reference to a state rationing policy):
Nearly 800 Aucklanders are about to be removed from surgery or hospital outpatient waiting lists in one hit because their health board cannot afford to care for them.
Many are waiting for general surgery or a gynaecology outpatient visit.
Auckland's three boards have regularly removed patients not sick or disabled enough to qualify for treatment under state rationing policy.
But now the Waitemata board is planning to dump, by the end of the month, nearly 800 patients who have waited too long, sending them back to the care of their GPs
... and from the U.K., where Welsh cancer patients are kept waiting:
Following the news that some cancer sufferers are waiting more than two months to begin treatment in Wales, Welsh Liberal Democrat Health spokesperson Jenny Randerson slammed government failure to meet the needs of cancer patients.
Patients at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital face an unacceptable wait for routine x-rays and scans.
[...]
"Some patients are still waiting too long for diagnosis, delaying their treatment, and too many internal examinations fail to achieve a result, slowing down diagnosis and causing distress to patients."
It's hardly surprising that British patients wait years for some types of surgery when their doctors are only permitted one day a month in the operating room:
HE has been waiting since January last year for surgery to his shattered ankle - now pensioner Don Wilkinson has been told the agonising wait may continue until next January.
The 74-year-old retired farmer, of Everingham, near Pocklington, told today how frustrating fresh delays were looming because of new operating restrictions at St James's Hospital in Leeds.
He said staff had told him the surgeon who hopes to repair his ankle could now have only one day a month in the operating theatre for such surgery.
He had been hoping only last month that the op would be carried out by the end of October, but he had been warned it could now be November, December or even January - making it two years since he suffered the injury.
[...]
"It's ridiculous," he said. "I am sick of it. It's just going on and on. I have worked for myself all my life, and paid a lot in taxes and National Insurance, but now I need the treatment, I don't seem to be able to get it."
It helps to have connections to get speedy health care under Canada's government-run system: (From the Aug 23 Winnipeg Sun - article is no longer online)
Leg-injury patients and health-care watchers are complaining that Sam Katz may have flexed his mayoral muscle to skip ahead of others in line for a knee operation.
After the Sun reported Katz underwent surgery at the Pan Am Clinic to repair a torn lateral meniscus -- apparently aggravated by his recent Manitoba Marathon run in June -- the grumbling began.
Brian Strong said he suffered the same kind of painful leg tear last November, but his doctor told him he won't go under the knife until at least early next year.
"Pan Am Clinic tells me the waiting time to get this surgery is over one year," Strong, a 35-year-old in the insurance industry, told the Sun. "However, Mr. Katz, having sustained his injury well after me, has received his surgery and will be jogging again in a few weeks."
Katz didn't say he'll be able to run again soon but did confirm he underwent surgery on his right leg at Pan Am last Thursday morning.
"I've just got to take it easy for, like, the next 48 hours and then I'll be back in action," he told the Sun shortly after. "I'm sure this has something to do with the marathon, yeah. It's just the price you have to pay. But you know what? I have no problem with it."
Michelle Sveinson said she's "thoroughly ticked" at news of the mayor's surgery, barely two months after the marathon.
"It amazes me that so many people are on waiting lists for several months -- and even years -- for various surgeries, and the mayor receives his within two months of his injury," she said. "It usually takes longer than that just to get into seeing a specialist."
DECLINES TO RESPOND
Katz through a spokesman refused to respond.
"The mayor is currently recovering from surgery and will not speak for any health-care providers' decisions or practices," said press secretary Brad Salyn.
Heidi Graham, spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said a lack of "centralized" wait lists means doctors organize their patient schedules, and "priorize their own patients for diagnostic and surgical procedures based on medical need."
Strong says Katz could calm the anger by providing a good reason for the speed of his surgery. Until he hears a reason, the mayor's operation will "insult" him professionally, he added.
"I'm in health-care insurance, and I view this as an attempt to take advantage of a health-care system that really doesn't need anybody taking advantage of it right now," Strong said. "Especially not someone in power who should set an example to others."
THE Bracks Government has admitted that people waiting for surgery have a greater chance of jumping the queue if they complain to the media.
As the debate over hospital waiting lists intensifies in the lead-up to November's election, Health Minister Bronwyn Pike yesterday accused Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu of "shamefully" exploiting sick Victorians in order to gain political mileage.
Ms Pike hit out at Mr Baillieu's new "waiting-list hotline", under which people are encouraged to call his office and report how long they have been waiting for surgery.
Ms Pike said Mr Baillieu was giving people false hope because none of the cases had been referred to her department for reassessment.
"We know we have to improve ... but it's not fair to use the individual to drive that improvement," she said.
However, she later conceded that people had a better chance of moving up the list if their concerns were raised in the media.
A Port Lincoln man says he does not know if he will live long enough to wait for a knee reconstruction and hip replacement.
Brian Hardy says he has to wait up to two years to have the surgery at Whyalla because at the moment they can only operate on one patient a week for joint replacement.
Some sobering numbers from a single Australian hospital:
3700 waiting to see ear, nose and throat specialists
2000 waiting to see an opthalmologist
1400 waiting to see a urologist
And after waiting years to see a specialist ... an even longer line for surgery:
When a patient is finally seen by a public hospital specialist, surgery is recommended in a third of cases, but patients then wait even longer for it to be done.
[...]
More than half those on surgeons' waiting lists are in category two, meaning they should be seen within three months. But Queensland Health sources said these patients often waited two or three years and sometimes four years, or until their condition deteriorated to category one, needing urgent attention.
On Thursday night, turned away after again donning a hospital gown and waiting several hours for surgery, Vi Loughridge wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
The 74-year-old has crippling arthritis in both knees and, after spending six hours in a pre-op room at Wellington Hospital, she was told she would not have surgery that day, and was sent home. It was the second time in a month.
[...]
Mrs Loughridge has been waiting for a double knee replacement for about six years. She cannot play lawn bowls, sit at her keyboard, vacuum, or move fast enough to pick up the phone two metres away before it cuts out after nine rings. She can stand just long enough to cook simple meals such as an omelet.
Public transport is out, because she falls up the steps. It takes three attempts to get up from her armchair. She often has to wait for the gristle to stop moving in her knees before she can stand up fully.
[...]
"She's got absolutely no quality of life," her daughter said.
In case you couldn't guess: New Zealand spends much less on their nationalized health care system than we do on health care in the U.S.
New York Times class warrior Paul Krugman continually flogs the notion of the U.S. as an unjust plutocracy beholden to the wealthiest 1% of earners while oblivious to the irony that he himself is a member of the income elite. I've got to ask just who does he know in the Bush administration?
This morning, Krugman has more populist advice (registration required) for Democrats on how to help working folk who have seen their disposable income crimped by rising health care costs: have government take over and provide health care to everyone:
Wages may be difficult to raise, but we won't know until we try. And as for declining benefits - well, every other advanced country manages to provide everyone with health insurance, while spending less on health care than we do.
While working Americans may complain about rising gas prices and lagging wage increases, I wonder how they would like the idea of nationalized health care when they are told that patients in the U.K. wait two years for MRI scans:
Some patients have had to wait nearly two years for hospital tests in North Staffordshire, according to a survey.
[...]
Patients who require a routine colonoscopy in Staffordshire - an internal examination of the large intestine - have to wait 665 days.
[...]
... statistics showed that the wait for a routine MRI scan in Birmingham was 338 days and over two years for a routine colonoscopy in Walsall.
Yes, Paul - they do spend less on health care than we do.
Arthritis sufferers in the west of Ireland are waiting up to seven years to see a consultant.
Patients have been left facing the consequences of the condition due to the chronic shortage of rheumatology specialists nationwide.
Almost half a million men and women and more than 5,000 children in Ireland have arthritis, but the country still has the lowest rate of rheumatologists per head of population in the EU, with up to 60 patients per clinic.
Associated conditions, which increase the longer treatment is delayed, include deformity, disability, heart disease and cancer.
The average waiting time for an initial appointment with a rheumatologist is four years, with sufferers in the Galway region waiting seven years. Patients at Dublin's St James's Hospital, which covers the midlands, are waiting two years.
[...]
"These consequences are preventable if patients are treated early," said Dr Gaye Cunnane, consultant rheumatologist at St James's.
Yes, but they have "universal coverage" guaranteed by the government!
Hospitals in Canada are funded by the government via annual "global budgets". They get their money up-front. Therefore, each new patient represents a cost - a drain on the budget. So, Canadian hospitals are incentivized to ration medical care by limiting the number of operating rooms and the hours in which they may be used. Private hospitals in the U.S. have exactly the opposite incentive: each new patient represents additional revenue so that hospitals are incentivized to provide more medical care for more people.
Unfortunately, the rationing of health care by Canadian hospitals can have fearful consequences. 18-month-old Olivia Vander Schelde needed urgent surgery to remove a brain tumor. Her neurosurgeon recommended that the operation take place within two weeks. However ...
Because Children's Hospital of Western Ontario and other London Health Sciences Centre hospitals do not staff operating rooms on long weekends, Olivia was going to have to wait for three or more weeks for surgery on a tumour discovered a week ago.
So her desperate mother did what media-savvy Canadians always do:
After Vander Schelde took her story to the media, the hospital arranged to find time for the operation Tuesday.
Unfortunately, they certainly "bumped" another patient by cancelling their surgery and making them wait longer instead of keeping the operating rooms open longer.
A MAN with a severely broken leg lay in a hospital bed for more than 10 days waiting for surgery.
The 60-year-old man endured four false alarms before finally being operated on yesterday at Dandenong Hospital.
James Abbott's family said he was in agony throughout the ordeal.
"It's an absolute crime," niece Deborah Bailey said.
[...]
Dandenong Hospital spokesman Kim Minett said it was "unfortunate" more urgent cases had come up, forcing Mr Abbott's operation to be cancelled.
Mr Minett said it was postponed for the first three days because blood thinners Mr Abbott was taking had to be out of his system.
"Obviously it's not ideal, but in this case it's just an unfortunate set of circumstances," he said.
Yet Ms Bailey said: "He was scheduled for surgery four times, which means fasting and no water.
"The poor man was going from extreme to extreme to extreme. It's not good for his wellbeing, his physical or emotional state."
She said the situation was made worse by the fact that Mr Abbott was still suffering from a broken hip and pelvis.
"He can't stand up or get out of bed," she said.
"I understand that he had to wait three days, but he should have had surgery on the fourth day."
Ms Bailey said she had asked doctors to move him to either Monash Medical Centre or the Alfred hospital, but was told waiting lists there were just as long.
In the U.K., its amazing what procedures are classified as necessary health care under their socialized system. A man who received sex change surgery at taxpayer's expense in 2001 is now getting his tattoos removed courtesy of the National Health Service (NHS):
A FORMER sailor who became a woman after sex-swap surgery has secured NHS funding to have her tattoos removed.
Tanya Bainbridge, 57, from Middleton, says she needs the ... laser treatment because her tattoos are "unladylike" and she can't wear sleeveless dresses in the summer.
Middleton and Heywood Primary Care Trust has approved the funding and Tanya is waiting for a date for surgery at Charing Cross Hospital in London, where she underwent her ... sex-change operation on the NHS in 2001.
Cancer sufferer, Claire McDonnel, 33, slammed Tanya Bainbridge, who will receive the ... procedure, while she has been refused the "wonder drug" Herceptin by her Primary Care Trust (PCT.)
SOME patients are being forced to wait up to four years for hip replacements on the National Health Service despite a guarantee that delays should be no more than six months.
NHS patients have the right to be treated abroad at public cost if they face "undue delay" getting surgery at home, the European court of justice ruled yesterday.
An interesting story in the British press gives lie to the claim that people have an enforceable "right" to health care at other people's expense. As John Goodman has said:
What the right to care means almost everywhere is nothing more than the opportunity to get services free (or at very little cost) as the government decides to make those services available. But government is under no obligation to provide any particular service. And if it fails to provide a service, people are not entitled to go to court and sue the way that Americans, for example, can sue an employer, a health maintenance organization (HMO) or even Medicaid."
A 74-year-old gentleman in the U.K., Edward Atkinson, has been deprived of his "right" to health care by a government-owned hospital:
Mr. Atkinson has been removed from the hospital's wait list for an evaluation for hip surgery and has been banned from anything other than life-saving treatment ...
And what was his offense?
Atkinson was charged with "sending malicious communications" to the hospital.
[...]
The feisty Mr. Atkinson sent ... photos and a video of a child being aborted to hospital chief executive Ruth May who described them as "offensive, horrendous and absolutely disgusting."
Quite simply, the government-run health care system (the NHS) did not like what he had to say, so he was refused medical care.
Also: I can't resist pointing out that he was on a wait list for only evaluation for hip surgery. There's another long wait list for having the actual surgery.
From the Canadian press on John Stossel's latest book tour:
Stossel compared the structure of some of Canada's social programs to those of the former Soviet Union, and warned that socialism does not work.
"It takes a long time for socialist systems to break down," he said, noting that Canadians are already travelling to U.S. cities like Buffalo for medical treatment that they can't get in a timely way at home.
And he relates this telling example of liberal "tolerance":
"Somebody stopped me on the street in New York and said, 'Are you John Stossel? I hope you die soon,' "
[...]
"In Manhattan, to be a conservative is akin to being a child molester. But I'm not much of a conservative, I'm a libertarian. But liberals call me a conservative and hate me because I defend business."
Champions of government rationing of health care like blogger Matthew Holt and young collectivist Ezra Klein think that they have blunted the charges of free-market advocates against the immoral and unworkable Canadian health care system by focusing on the one straw man that they can knock down: that Canadians are coming to the U.S. in droves for medical care that they can't get at home. Health policy blogger Kate Steadman bravely enters the fray in her recent commentary:
I'm going to throw myself into the fight here, and debunk another favored myth of the Right, which is that the Canadian health system is so bad, millions of Canadians come here for their health care.
[...]
According to surveys, less than 0.1% of Canadians are expressly seeking care in the U.S.
The problem is that few on the right side of the debate are perpetuating this so-called myth. To my knowledge, those "dangerous reactionaries" at the Fraser Institute haven't made this argument. Nor have those "looney libertarians" at PRI - or those "heartless" free-marketers over at Cato.
Its not difficult to see why. Canadians have already paid taxes for national health insurance. They've also been been subjected to years of government propaganda about the superiority of their system and the absurd notion that socialized medicine is a defining feature of what it means to be 'Canadian' - even though it has only been around since 1984!
When the average Canadian becomes sick and is put on a long waiting list, they don't have the money to go to the U.S. to buy health care because they've already spent it in the form of high taxes! They don't have private health insurance because it's been outlawed. And - they don't have savings earmarked for health care expenditures since the government has assured them that they are covered.
Canadian Joyce Munro writes to us in regard to our short film Dead Meat and her experiences with socialized health care in Canada:
Enjoyed your video and it is true all the way through. The first people you interviewed obviously had never used the system for anything more than a cold. I had to have double knee replacements and from the time I got referred to my first Orthopedic surgeon until I had my surgery was 5 years! I am happy to say that unlike the other lady from Calgary I must have a high pain threshold as I never got any farther than Tylenol 3s. What makes me so angry is while denying us proper timely care the advocates of public care are very cavalier to tell you to go out of country or province for your procedure.
[...]
The only way you can get swift service is if you are a union member or member of the elite, meaning, politicians , newspaper people and anyone else who may "Squeal" on the system. That is why the ordinary joe dies in the queue!
I wonder how many Americans are prepared to wait 5 years for "free" orthopedic surgery.
By the time Luis Couto was turned away from the U.S. border on his way to an appointment to discuss gastric bypass surgery, he had already spent seven hours on a bus, staring at an openly hostile bus driver, and he had already watched as the entire bus was emptied and the passengers rearranged so he could take the two seats his body fills.
"When I finally got there and they told me they weren't going to let me go across, I just lost it," he says.
"There's a five- to six-year wait for this surgery in Canada; in the U.S., it's six months to a year. I don't have a lot of time. Look at me."
However, Michael Moore doesn't need to worry about getting his surgery in the event that the US adopts a Canadian-style socialized health care system - as he advocates. Under the Canadian system, everyone is equal when it comes to waiting for medical care - except for politicians, celebrities and hockey players who usually seem to jump to the head of the health care queue.
We've written here before about the rationing of technology and diagnostic procedures in Canada. By delaying MRI scans to determine if a patient has cancer, the health care system prevents the addition of new patients to politically-sensitive waiting lists for cancer surgery and treatment.
The 42-year-old older brother of Flyers forward Brian Savage is lying in bed in Room 1111 of Montreal General Hospital.
[...]
Michael Savage is recovering from surgery to remove a tumor on his esophagus and heart. His chemotherapy is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks.
[...]
Michael Savage began having trouble swallowing in December.
Under Canada's system of socialized medicine, the wait for an MRI - which detected the tumor - was six weeks. By then, the cancer had grown and spread to Savage's lymphatic system, and swallowing was almost impossible.
The surgery involved removal of the tumor from the esophagus and heart, plus removal of one-third of his stomach.
Dr Sarah Burnett, a consultant radiologist in London who worked in the NHS for 15 years, said she took out private medical insurance while she was employed in the state service because she was unimpressed with the level of care she witnessed first hand.
"NHS treatment is not a pleasant experience in any way - from the standard of the food, to ward cleanliness and the chance of catching MRSA," she said.
Last year Burnett was diagnosed with breast cancer, detected during a private medical screening. Within two hours of her annual check she underwent an ultrasound examination that showed multiple small tumours. An hour after that Burnett was seen by a surgeon who arranged a skin-sparing mastectomy. A few days later she was recovering from surgery.
"I was lucky enough to have exceptionally prompt treatment because I choose to pay for insurance. Under the NHS I would not have been screened until 50 for breast cancer and would not have been able to catch my cancer at such an early stage," said Burnett.
One of Britain's leading plastic surgeons has quit NHS work because he says red tape is making it impossible for doctors to do their job.
David Gault, a consultant with Great Ormond St Children's Hospital in London, resigned abruptly, saying the system no longer puts patients first. He said his frustrations had mounted as he watched money being poured into developing ever-more layers of management without considering patient welfare.
Mr Gault, a world authority on laser surgery and ear reconstruction, said: "Years ago doctors could prioritise. But now managers control the patient lists. It means everyone has to wait six months regardless of how urgent their case is."
We received this email this morning from Janice Stokes of Saskatchewan:
Hello On the Fence Films,
Congratulations to your company and to authors Browning and Greenberg on bringing some of the harsh realities of Canadian health care to your American audience. I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, and believe that your film represents the experiences and commonly-held views of Canadians on their public health care systems.
In the post-war growth period, publicly-funded health care in Canada was feasible. However, it is no longer affordable because of the demographics of an aging society. Health care currently consumes about 40% of the federal and provincial governments' spending, experiencing around a 7% annual increase. Health departments eat everyone else's lunch - to the detriment of other services such as public housing, highways, and education - areas that we know have an impact on safety, quality of life, and overall health. Industrialized countries are aging, in general, including the U.S., making American governments suspect to some of the budgeting issues that Canadian governments are currently facing.
In Saskatchewan (home of Tommy Douglas, father of medicare and father of Shirley Douglas, and also home to former premier Roy Romanow, coincidentally head of the 2003 federal health care commission), 70% of annual budget increases to health care go to funding wage and benefit increases for unionized health care workers. Shirley Douglas recently came to Canada and supported the public health care system alongside of the left-wing New Democratic Party leader. If it's so great, why doesn't she live here? Romanow's federal health care commission final report was a truly unamazing rubber stamp on the system, despite a fair amount of research feeding into the report that showed that, while Canadians supported a public system, they were inclined to support privately delivered services and even privately funded services if it did not sacrifice the public system to do so. You may be interested in looking at that federal government research and supporting documents if you have not done so already.
Despite the time spent in Canada pondering health care, Canadian politicians have failed citizens by never truly engaging them in a balanced review of health care. It is often painted in black and white terms, with center-left and left-wing rhetoric such as 'paying to get to the head of the line' used to brainwash Canadians into thinking that public is the only way to go.
Ontario Minister of Health George Smitherman won't provide the cancer drug Avastin to a 59-year-old man with stage four colorectal cancer.
However, he has been indefatigable in his failed efforts to have the province pay for sex-change surgeries:
Ontario's health minister appeared to run afoul of his political masters ... when an apparent bid by George Smitherman to reinstate provincial funding for sex-change procedures was abruptly shot down by his own government.
Smitherman had reportedly been working for months to restore Ontario Health Insurance Plan coverage for sex changes in cases where an individual has been diagnosed with a gender identity disorder.
I wonder if his own personal biases play a part in his decision-making:
Smitherman, who is openly gay, represents the downtown riding of Toronto Centre-Rosedale, which includes Canada's largest gay community.
How many people would consider it a good financial move to purchase insurance to protect against the possibility that one might need marriage counseling services or drug abuse treatment in the future? How about acupuncture?
Personally, I'm willing to take my chances and pay out of pocket should I need such services. However, since I live in Florida, I have no choice but to purchase coverage for these treatments - if I want to own a personal health insurance policy. - And, I pay more for insurance because of it. I can afford it - however, many people can't. And those people often go uninsured as a result.
We constantly hear about the "crisis" of the uninsured in America due to the high cost of health insurance. But how often do we hear about the primary cause of sky-rocketing insurance premiums? Government intervention in the medical and insurance marketplaces is chiefly responsible for high health care and insurance costs.
One way in which state politicians drive up the cost of insurance is by imposing health insurance "mandates" which require that insurance companies must offer coverage for a particular health care product or service. Forty five states mandate alcohol treatment, thirty four mandate drug abuse treatment while coverage for In Vitro fertilization is mandated in fourteen states.
Imagine if politicians decreed that every new home built must have at least four bedrooms, top-of-the-line kitchen appliances and a swimming pool. Home buyers at the lower end of the scale would be unable to afford a new home. Health insurance works the same way.
The Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) has recently released the 2006 edition of Health Insurance Mandates in the States which lists mandates for every state and includes estimates of what each adds to the cost of a health insurance policy.
According to their website:
... mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to more than 50%, depending on the state and the specific legislative language.
THE mother of a toddler with a rare heart defect fears her daughter may never have the life-saving surgery she needs after the operation was cancelled yesterday for the ninth time.
The rationing of OR time and the cancellation of elective surgeries in government-run health care systems is the norm. These stories only bubble up to the mass media when there's a hook - like a young child, imminent death, or someone makes a public stink:
A Londonderry woman has made an official complaint against Altnagelvin Hospital after her operation was cancelled three times without notice.
Roisin Barton, who is waiting on surgery for bowel disease, was told on Wednesday there was not a bed for her.
And yet - with the third largest workforce in the world - the British National Health Service (NHS) is unable to provide basic hygiene in a third of its hospitals:
MORE than a third of NHS hospitals and other health trusts are unable to provide their staff with hot water, soap, alcohol rubs and other basic hygiene requirements whenever they need them, according to a national survey.
As seen in our short film Dead Meat, California State Senator Sheila Kuehl wants to outlaw private health insurance there and institute a 'single-payer' health care system. If she is successful, California would join the ranks of North Korea, Cuba and Canada which are the only places where private insurance is outlawed. Within a matter of years great tax increases will follow and we'll begin to see some of the same horror stories in the Golden State that are routine in Canada.
A plan to outlaw private health insurance in California has been proposed by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles). Senator Kuehl's bill, SB840, proposes to create the California Health Insurance Agency, a state government run single payer system for financing the health care of all Californians. Her bill, if enacted, would abolish all private health insurance in the Golden State. Her legislation essentially aims to replicate the system of socialized medicine in Canada which, until a recent court ruling in Quebec, made all private health care illegal. Her health care proposal is more authoritarian than the health care systems in the United Kingdom or Germany in which citizens can buy private insurance if they so choose.
Remarkably, Kuehl's proposal to socialize California's health care is being made just at the time when the Canadian system it resembles is falling apart at the seams. For instance, Canada's single payer system is projected to absorb more than half the budgets of most Canadian provinces. In addition, the amount of time a Canadian patient must wait before receiving medical care is notorious. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years," said Dr. Brian Day in a recent New York Times article on Canada's health care crisis.
You have to wonder if this is what the single-payer crowd mean when they talk about the "efficiency" of socialized medicine (from the U.K.):
A senior surgeon has made a public apology to patients whose operations are being postponed - because he has been too efficient.
Peter Cox, a general consultant surgeon at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, and his colleagues have been told to slow down by the local health authorities.
Not only has Mr Cox met the current six-month waiting list target but he has surpassed it. As a result, more than 50 of his patients are being sent letters telling them that their surgery dates will be put back.
Michael Tanner at the Cato Institute has a new article which contrasts the treatment that Americans get when they are diagnosed with cancer with that of citizens of countries having national health care systems:
The one common characteristic of all national health care systems, including Canada's, is that they ration care. Sometimes, they ration it explicitly, denying certain types of treatment altogether. More often, they ration indirectly, imposing global budgets that limit the availability of high-tech medical equipment, or which require long waits for patients seeking treatment.
In the United States, by contrast, there are no such limits, meaning that the most advanced treatment options are far more available. This translates directly into saved lives.
Take prostate cancer, for example. Even though U.S. men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than their counterparts in other countries, they are less likely to die from the disease. Less than one out of five American men with prostate cancer will die from it, but 57% of British men and nearly half of French and German men will. Even in Canada, a quarter of men diagnosed with prostate cancer, die from the disease.
That is, in part, because in most countries with national health insurance, the preferred treatment for prostate cancer is ... to do nothing. Prostate cancer is a slow disease. Most patients are older and will live for several years after diagnosis. Therefore, it is not cost-effective in a world of socialized medicine to treat the disease aggressively. The approach saves money, but comes at a human cost.
John O'Bannon (R), a Virginia state legislator may be well-intentioned, however his recent failed attempt to mandate state health insurance coverage for gastric bypass surgery is a good example of how state governments drive up the cost of health insurance.
If government mandated that all cars must come loaded with options like leather upholstery and navigation systems, many people would be unable to afford an automobile. In the same way, state insurance mandates greatly contribute to the number of uninsured individuals among us.
The British National Health Service (NHS) was founded in 1948 to provide free, publicly-funded health care to all. The NHS not only pays for nearly all medical care for Britons, but owns the hospitals and directly employs the doctors and nurses. The NHS is the world's third biggest employer after the Indian State Railways and the Chinese Army with nearly 1.3 million employees.
In 1942, the British Medical Journal claimed that a nationalized health care system would provide "100 percent service for 100 percent of the population".
And yet - after nearly sixty years of trying to make socialized medicine work - health care is still rationed, waiting lists for surgery are long and Britons often times suffer greatly and needlessly while waiting for "free" medical care as evidenced by a continuing stream of news stories like these:
Around 10 operations a month are being cancelled because of a shortage of critical care beds. The problem affects patients whose surgery is so serious they need intensive nursing care afterwards.
If there is not a bed available - usually because an emergency case has taken precedence - their operation is delayed.
Swansea Valley great-grandmother Nan Hicks knows all about the problem.
Her operation to treat a cancerous growth in her mouth was cancelled three times before Morriston surgeons secured a critical care bed for her.
A gynaecologist at a Kent hospital has said he is being left to "twiddle his thumbs" and do crosswords because his hospital cannot afford more surgery.
David Penman claims non-urgent surgery is being postponed at the Medway Maritime Hospital because there is not enough money for this financial year.
[...]
But Mr Penman said appointments had been shunted into the next financial year, by as much as 20 weeks in some cases, in order to reduce the overspend, while doctors, nurses and theatre teams were standing around doing nothing.
He said: "What do you do while you wait for the next person to turn up when there should be three in the gap between two patients? Sit and read the paper, drink coffee - while we're paid, when we could be seeing patients.
The rationing of hospital beds and OR time is standard procedure in countries where health care is socialized. Our movie Dead Meat tells the story of a woman in Canada who died while waiting for bypass surgery after her operation had been cancelled several times. Hopefully, a little girl in the U.K. who has had her operation cancelled seven times won't have to wait much longer for "free" government medical services:
A DESPERATELY-ill little girl with a rare heart defect has had her crucial, lifesaving surgery cancelled for a seventh time because of a shortage of beds.
Lily Cater, who celebrated her second birthday yesterday, is bravely fighting a heart condition called pulmonary artesia which affects only two children born in the UK every year.
She was due to be operated on at Birmingham Children's Hospital on February 15 but her surgery was delayed by a chronic shortage of beds for post-operation treatment.
The same problem has forced the operation to be cancelled and re-scheduled a further six times.
I recently received a comment from an academic in the U.K. in response to my earlier blog entry describing the web site and political philosophy of Professor Peter McLaren of UCLA. The comment is excerpted below and can be read in its entirety here. My response follows.
There is No Evidence Mr Browning!
In my view, Stuart Browning has misrepresented the nature of Peter McLaren's web site and the work of this internationally renowned scholar on critical education. First, nowhere on McLaren's web site (or in his writings) in there any evidence to suggest that he advocates a totalitarian state. Indeed, McLaren is a severe critic of Stalinism, Fascism and totalitarianism in general. Rather, it is capital that is developing as a totality: the social universe of capital is a totalitarian one - and McLaren is against its development. Secondly, Browning shows a basic lack of understanding if he thinks that promoting socialist democracy is the same as advocating a totalitarian state.
A Marxist state is one which deprives its citizens of the right to the fruits of their own labor, which uses the threat of physical force to prevent its citizens from starting and owning a business, pursuing a dream, and controlling their own economic destiny. Totalitarian states like Cuba and the former Soviet Union are good examples - and they are the only way such a political theory can work in practice. Whether such a system comes about through a coup d'etat or by popular vote, the results are the same. Advocates of Capitalism, freedom and individual rights do not recognize such shams as "democratic socialism" - and the parents of students enrolled in the Graduate School of Education at UCLA should be aware that this is what's being pushed in the name of pedagogy.
Michael Tanner has a good essay over at the Cato website that cuts through some of the nonsense we keep hearing about health care spending:
It is true that the United States spends more on health care than any other country. Why is that a bad thing? There is no "right" amount to spend on health care or anything else. The United States spends more on athletic shoes than any other country. No one speaks of the athletic shoe crisis.
Economists consider health care a "normal good," meaning that spending rises or falls with income. As incomes rise, people demand more and better health care. America's wealth determines its spending on healthcare.
The real problem is the fact that the people spending the money are not the people paying the bills. Because those purchasing health care are able to pass the bill onto third parties, the usual market disciplines don't apply. True health-care reform would focus on giving consumers a greater stake in the decision-making process.
Across the country, state legislators are cooking up all manner of state health insurance schemes. However, a look at government-run health care systems around the world provides a cautionary note. The failure of New Zealand's public medical system is on full display for all to see:
Nearly 9000 sick and disabled Cantabrians in need of hospital treatment have been told they are unlikely to get it in the public health system, according to figures released yesterday.
[...]
Among those with little hope of publicly funded surgery is Joy Pipe, 72, who suffers crippling back pain due to spinal stenosis, a treatable condition. Pipe was among nearly 1000 orthopaedic patients told in December they were unlikely to get publicly funded treatment.
Christchurch shopowner Kris Pattrick was forced to sell her business and go on a benefit after being told she would not get surgery for her prolapse, a condition that makes it difficult to stand for long periods. She was among hundreds struck from waiting lists in August 2004 when Christchurch Women's Hospital declared it could offer surgery only to "high-scoring urgent cases".
[...]
Pegasus Health managing director Paul McCormack said the previous waiting list deceived many patients who believed they would get treatment if they waited long enough. "Now, what it's telling people is with the current funding the health system can't afford to do the surgery you need," he said.
... Canadians are perfectly content to eat sawdust, as long as they can be assured that no one is ever going to be allowed to buy a steak.
And look! They're on to us:
... if Canadians were wondering why grandma had to wait a lot longer than the family dog for an MRI, this was only because they had succumbed to neo-con propaganda.
Oddly enough, she thinks that the Canadian health care system is "fantastic":
Sigrid Macdonald won't endure months of agony next time.
The 53-year-old Ottawa woman, who waited three years for the hip replacement she received in 2003, said she'll pay for surgery at a private clinic when her troublesome knee gives out.
"My very first thought was I'm not getting in that line again," said Macdonald, who wrote a book, Getting Hip, about her experience. "I'm willing to spend or borrow $12,000 to $15,000 to bypass the line."
COULD BARELY WALK
In the final six months before her surgery, Macdonald said she could barely walk the 90 metres to her mailbox.
"I think the medicare system is fantastic," said Macdonald.
"There are some areas where it just doesn't work."
A report yesterday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information painted a picture of waits across the health-care system, from waiting for an appointment to seeing a family doctor or specialist, to waiting for diagnostic testing.
After all, it would be "Un-Canadian" to question the noble idea of government-provided "health care for all" - even if it is a sham. Thank goodness for the creeping "Americanization" of their system - or she'd be in misery for a few years.
QUEENSLANDERS are being forced to wait longer for urgent surgery in the state's troubled public hospital system, which is performing fewer operations than it did a year ago, according to elective surgery waiting-list figures released yesterday.
Almost 500 patients have lost their place on hip replacement waiting lists in Canterbury within the last four months.
Canterbury District Health Board says the decision was made in November last year to remove 461 patients from the list and refer them back to their GPs.
Surgeons at hospitals across the region have been secretly ordered to "go slow" on the operating table because of the deepening cash crisis ravaging health trusts.
Non-urgent operations are being rationed as primary care trusts - which fund the operations - are so short of cash they cannot afford to pay for more surgery than is deemed essential.
Much of the attention on waiting for health care focuses on surgical and diagnostic imaging wait lists. New data show that, at least in some cases, waiting to see a specialist also makes up a significant proportion of the overall waiting period for care. For example, in the case of hip and knee replacement patients, nearly one-third of the time between referral to a specialist and surgery was spent waiting for an initial visit to the orthopedic surgeon.
A Canadian man has been waiting in pain for 2 and half years to reattach an ankle ligament and will suffer permanent damage to the joint due to the long wait:
Russell McRae will never forget the summer of 2003 - but not for a good reason.
Shortly after he began his summer construction job in May of that year, the young Val Caron man was involved in a workplace accident where he severely injured his left ankle.
More than two and a half years later, he is reminded of that accident with each painful step he takes. For some reason, McRae has been unable to get the surgery he needs to re-attach his ankle ligament and remove a piece of floating tissue.
[...]
One of the doctors he's visited told him he'd have arthritis in his ankle because he's walked on his injury for a long time and has damaged his cartilage.
"I'm definitely upset because of the length of time it's been. And now it's doing other things to me, when it should have been done right away," he says.
His mother Lois, a nurse at Sudbury Regional Hospital, is furious her son is still waiting to have his ankle repaired.
"I've written letters to all the local MPs and MPPs, and (Nickel Belt MPP and New Democrat health critic) Shelley Martel was the only one that answered," she says.
"She forwarded my letter to (Ontario Health and Long-Term Care Minister) George Smitherman, and asked for him to answer us directly. We haven't received a reply yet."
Regular readers of this blog may remember George Smitherman, the Health Minister of Ontario, as a socialist pit-bull who refuses to countenance any private medicine. Maybe he should spend more time answering the cries for help from his constituents than bullying entrepreneurs.
We keep hearing from left-wing heath care "reformers" that the U.S. is the only modern, industrialized nation without a government-run health care system. Perhaps a round-up of recent news stories from around the world chronicling the results of socialized medicine will provide some perspective:
Australia
In one region of Australia, people have been experiencing some very long and uncomfortable waits for medical treatments:
More than a third of those with haemorrhoids waited more than a year ...
[...]
More than 60 per cent of public patients with cataracts waited more than a year for surgery ...
[...]
As many as 50 per cent of patients needing knee replacements waited more than a year.
A 64-year-old man in Australia faces an eight-month wait to have a catheter removed.
ELECTIVE surgery waiting lists in Victoria are vastly underestimated because some patients have to queue for up to a year to get a specialist to add them to the official list.
The "secret" waiting list - the long delay before people join more than 40,000 patients officially waiting for elective surgery - was uncovered in freedom-of-information documents obtained by The Age.
They reveal that more than 20,000 people are waiting to see a specialist at outpatient clinics in public hospitals in Melbourne.
At least one hospital has another waiting list just to make an appointment with a doctor. At the Royal Children's Hospital, more than 700 children were waiting to see a specialist as at October last year, but had not been able to make an appointment.
Scotland
Cancer patients in Scotland are waiting four months before starting treatment.
England
A banker with an aggressive brain tumour is waiting to get radiotherapy treatment. He's already past the maximum recommended wait time for radiotherapy. According to his wife: "He should have had radiotherapy no later than four to six weeks, and we are already past week seven,"
Operations for English cancer patients are being cancelled because of a shortage of ICU beds.
A MAN with 40 convictions for driving while disqualified has escaped a jail term because he's awaiting a serious operation.
A court heard that Harry Nicholson, who expects to undergo surgery next month, would lose his place on the waiting list if he was sent down.
New Zealand
Breast and prostate cancer patients are waiting more than four weeks - past the recommended wait time - for followup radiation or chemotherapy treatment:
The Ministry of Health's own guidelines have a maximum of four weeks and a "good practice" target of two weeks or less for palliative patients.
Dr Blue, a breast cancer doctor, said November waiting time figures show 80 people had been waiting four weeks or more for palliative treatment.
She said palliative cancer patients were a group that had been growing since 2003. People had often just been told their cancer had spread.
"It's a devastating time," she said. A wait of more than four weeks was very stressful.
Cataract surgeries have just been put on hold at Lakeshore General Hospital in Montreal:
Cataract surgeries were put on hold at the LGH after opthamologists reached their cap of 1,033 operations for 2005-'06 on Feb. 10 - seven weeks before March 31, which is the last day of the hospital's fiscal year.
Opthamologists will not have funding to resume cataract operations at the LGH until the 2006-'07 fiscal year begins on April 1.
"Hallway medicine" is being practiced in Alberta where a man with a history of heart problems had to wait two days for a bed:
... he lay on a gurney for 48 hours, waiting to be admitted to a room.
It turned out ... two arteries in his chest were 90% plugged, and he had several shunts implanted to expand their flow of blood.
While socialist politicians fight a rearguard action against private medical entrepreneurs, Canadians are dying while waiting for "free" government health care:
The government needs to start calculating the economic loss for not treating cancer patients. Had these patients who have died while waiting been allowed to remain alive as productive and tax-paying citizens, they would have "paid off" the cost of their treatment in their ensuing working years.
[T]he percentage of the respondents in need of elective coronary bypass who had been waiting for more than three months was 0% in U.S., 18.2% in Sweden, 46.7% in Canada, and 88.9% in the United Kingdom" -- from an Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development study of waiting time for elective surgery in developed countries.*
* From today's Wall Street Journal Political Diary newsletter:
As a followup to yesterday's story about suffering Canadians being forced to wait until the end of the hospital fiscal year before having any hope of receiving surgery, it should be noted that not only does the Canadian system force people to wait in misery - but also outlaws - for the most part - any attempt at finding relief in a private facility outside the socialized system. Economist and philosopher George Reisman has just written a very good essay explaining why socialized medicine leads to the prohibition of private medicine:
... all one need do to understand why socialized medicine leads to the prohibition of private medicine is simply to hold in mind the combination of deteriorating medical treatment and controlled physician incomes under socialized medicine and ask what would happen if an escape from this nightmare exists in the form of private medicine. Obviously, physicians who want to earn a higher income and to have the freedom to treat their patients in accordance with their own medical judgment will flee the socialized system for the private system and leave basically only the dregs of medicine for what will remain of the socialized system. That is what the government's prohibition of private medical care is designed to prevent.
The utterly heartless and arbitrary rationing of health care in Canada produces many horror stories. As I have written before, a particularly cruel rationing method limits the number of surgeries of a given type at a given hospital. Once the allotted number of surgeries have been performed for the fiscal year, no more operations are allowed.
A current textbook example is provided by the intense suffering of an Ontario man:
A mentally disabled Elliot Lake man will have to live with a painful stomach condition for a few more months because Sudbury Regional Hospital (SRH) has a limit on the surgery he needs.
The middle-aged man, who was born with his stomach in the wrong place, suffers from severe and painful dry heaves. His condition can be cured by a procedure called laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery, which would change the position of his stomach.
However, the hospital has limited Sudbury's two thoracic surgeons to doing just 25 of these surgeries in a fiscal year, and they have already surpassed their limit.
The man was originally scheduled for surgery at Sudbury Regional Hospital in December, but the procedure was cancelled twice, says Heather Tasse, a home support worker for Community Living Algoma who helps to care for the man.
The man's surgeon, who has asked not to be named, told Tasse the hospital isn't allowing him to perform any laparoscopic anti-reflux surgeries from the beginning of February until the end of March, when the fiscal year ends.
Demand for his services has been increasing over the past few years. He is one of only a few doctors in the province able to perform anti-reflux surgery in a minimally invasive fashion.
Tasse says her client is near the top of the surgeon's 14-month waiting list, because he is in so much pain.
In a similar vein, a Quebec hospital has just halted all hip and knee operations until April when a new fiscal year begins ...
Ethan Lichtblau, chief of orthopedics at Santa Cabrini Hospital in Rosemont, said he quit doing hip and knee surgeries this week after a Health Department directive to stop operating because the hospital has blown its prosthesis budget this year.
It was reported last week that Sheryl Crow had surgery for breast cancer and would now have radiation therapy. Like most American women in the same situation, Ms. Crow will not wait for radiation therapy to begin.
Unfortunately, breast cancer patients in the U.K. needing radiation therapy after surgery are not so lucky:
More than half of cancer patients who need radiotherapy have to wait longer for their treatment than the recommended maximum of four weeks, according to the Royal College of Radiologists.
There is evidence, says the latest report, "that these delays reduce the chance of cure and worsen outcomes in some patients."
[...]
Of patients whose primary cancer treatment was radiotherapy, 53% had waited more than four weeks. The college says it is "good practice" to see patients within two weeks, and they should not wait beyond four. A slightly greater proportion - 57% - of those undergoing adjuvant radiotherapy following surgery waited more than four weeks. A third of patients waited more than the maximum two weeks for palliative radiotherapy, to reduce the symptoms of their cancer.
[...]
Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the patient support group, said it regularly hears from women with breast cancer who are worried about delays in obtaining radiotherapy. "We have heard of women having to wait four months for their radiotherapy when ideally it should follow hard on the heels of surgery to remove breast cancer,"
Dr. Brian Day, who is featured in our film Dead Meat, is profiled in this morning's New York Times:
The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.
Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years in discomfort before receiving treatment.
But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.
The country's publicly financed health insurance system - frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity - is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.
Dr. Day, for instance, is planning to open more private hospitals, first in Toronto and Ottawa, then in Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Ontario provincial officials are already threatening stiff fines. Dr. Day says he is eager to see them in court.
"We've taken the position that the law is illegal," Dr. Day, 59, says. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."
[...]
Now Dr. Day says he is considering building a full-service private hospital somewhere in Canada with a private medical school attached to it.
"In a free and democratic society where you can spend money on gambling and alcohol and tobacco," Dr. Day said, "the state has no business preventing you and me from spending our own money on health care."
A U.K. grandmother has been waiting 13 years for a hip replacement:
The family of a Gower gran who has been waiting 13 years for a new hip are furious she has apparently been forgotten about.
Sylvia Lott, aged 72, was first referred by her GP to Morriston Hospital in 1993. But after a series of delays because she was not considered fit enough for surgery, she was apparently taken off the waiting list in 2004.
Mrs Lott is virtually wheelchair bound and can only walk a few yards at a time with the help of a frame. But despite desperately hoping for a replacement hip, she has almost given up hope of ever getting one.
Her son, Gordon Austin, said: "My mother has been on the waiting list since she was 60 and is getting very frustrated with all these delays.
Also from the U.K. - a 4-year-old girl with several absessed teeth has been waiting in agony over a month for "urgent" dental care:
Little Nikita Smith has four rotten teeth which have caused huge abscesses in her mouth. Mum Jane says the youngster lies awake in "dreadful pain" and has not been to school since the condition started.
But despite Jane's best efforts, Nikita is still waiting for NHS treatment for a condition which dentists themselves have described as "urgent".
Jane said: "It's awful to see your daughter in so much pain and not be able to do anything about it. No one listens, however loud you shout. NHS dentistry is just a very bad joke."
Single mum Jane, from Bramley, Leeds, first noticed Nikita was in pain in mid January but since then says she has had to battle even to get her daughter seen by a dentist.
First, she tried to get an urgent appointment at her local surgery but was told because Nikita is not registered she could not be seen.
Jane claims her daughter has been on the waiting list to register since she was born.
In a replay of TennCare, Tennessee's expanded Medicaid program, Maine Governor John Baldacci's Dirigo Health program has succeeded in shifting thousands of previously insured individuals onto the state's welfare rolls - and as last week's OpinionJournal noted, the promised savings have turned into a tax increase:
Welcome to the Pine Tree state, where a program that the governor claims has saved the state millions of dollars means that your taxes go ... up. Maine is the home of Democratic Gov. John Baldacci's Dirigo Health, which regulates the state's health-care system and includes a subsidized health-insurance program. (Dirigo is the state's motto, Latin for "I lead.") When the law creating Dirigo Health was signed, proponents said it would reduce cost-shifting and health-system costs and ultimately cover all 130,000 uninsured Mainers within five years, including 31,000 uninsured in year one.
It hasn't worked out that way. Through the first nine months only 1,600 previously uninsured individuals enrolled in Dirigo Health's insurance product, called DirigoChoice. The other 6,000 who enrolled simply traded their private health insurance for taxpayer-subsidized DirigoChoice. The program continues to spend millions subsidizing insurance for those already insured.
A DESPERATE cancer patient is planning to fly across Europe for surgery after waiting four months for treatment in Leeds.
Phil Murdoch was diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer in early October and has still not been treated.
He is worried the long wait will kill him - so worried, the 60-year-old is thinking of flying to Cyprus and paying for surgery.
He said: "I can't waait much longer. What else can I do? I'm not going to die. "My brother-in-law lives in northern Cyprus and he has found a Turkish surgeon who is prepared to do it.
[...]
On October 11 he saw a consultant at St James's Hospital. "He told me I had an aggressive form of prostate cancer and ignoring it wasn't an option."
Scans and appointments followed and he next saw his consultant on November 18, when he was given treatment options - surgery or radiotherapy. He opted for surgery but was told he must speak to a radiography consultant before deciding.
When he returned to the original consultant on December 13 and repeated his surgery request he was put on a list and told to call if he had not heard anything by mid January.
On January 27 - more than three months after he was diagnosed, he was told he was "on the list but not in the diary".
The government of Quebec is now allowing the private sector to provide some health care services, a tacit admission of the failure of government-run, rationed medicine to provide timely care for its citizens:
The Quebec government Thursday heralded a "new era" in health care in the province, vowing a strong public system while opening the door to the private-sector for procedures including hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery.
Self-styled health policy expert and defender of the Canadian health care rationing system Matthew Holt is now making excuses for the long waits for MRI appointments in Canada by lauding a report purportedly showing that the use of MRI machines is "more efficient" in Canada than in the U.S. as measured by MRI scans per scanner.
With the severe shortage of diagnostic machines there, its no surprise that they are more heavily used. However, by Mr. Holt's logic, Canada could further increase "efficiency" by actually reducing the number of available MRI scanners. In fact, a single MRI scanner for the entire country would be the most "efficient".
Canadians endure long waits for diagnostic tests that Americans would not tolerate. My blog entry from last week about a teenager waiting for knee surgery is typical. His parents ended up paying $550 for an MRI "after waiting six months to no avail in the public system". Rick Baker of Timely Medical Alternatives, a Vancouver-based organization which takes waiting Canadians across the border for health care, told me a couple of weeks ago that he is encountering desperate people from Manitoba willing to fly more than a thousand miles to get an ultrasound! However, the real cruelty of the Canadian health care rationing system becomes apparent when considering people who suspect that they may have cancer. As I noted in my recent commentary:
In Canada, the longer a person waits for a diagnostic test that enables a doctor to definitively diagnose cancer - the longer that person is kept off the politically-sensitive waiting list for cancer treatment - and the better their decrepit and inhumane system looks.
While he's on the topic of the efficiencies of the Canadian system, perhaps Mr. Holt could explore the efficiency of the Burnaby Hospital in British Columbia where the aforementioned teenager is still waiting to have his knee surgery:
... there are over 19 thousand people waiting for orthopedic surgery in British Columbia alone - yet surgeons are limited to one day a week in the OR, the OR is shut down to "elective" surgery at 3:30 in the afternoon and one OR at the hospital mentioned is used for storage!
We've previously noted here the opinions of health care rationing champion Henry Aaron of The Brookings Institute.
"Single-Payer" health care advocate and defender of the Canadian health care system Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program concurs with Aaron's idea of coercive government control of medicine, however, he just doesn't like the word 'rationing':
We cannot allow Aaron's use of the term "rationing" to be used by the opponents of single payer to attack our model. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that improving use of health care resources prevents excessive queues.
Perhaps Mr. Canne could point to a single country where his "single-payer model" has been implemented without rationing and waiting lists. Certainly, he can't be talking about Canada (see here, here, here, here, or here) or the U.K. (see here, here, here, here, here, or here).
It's not just "elective" procedures like orthopedic surgery that Canadians wait for - as the defenders of the government-run system like to say - but critical, life-or-death treatment for cancer: Bladder surgery wait time unsafe
Quebec bladder cancer patients are dying unnecessarily because of increasing delays in treatment, a leading urologist said yesterday.
The death rate among patients stuck waiting 12 weeks or longer for surgery jumped by 20 per cent from 1990 to 2002, said Armen Aprikian, chief urologist of the McGill University Health Centre.
"A 20-per-cent increase in the death rate is huge," said Aprikian, whose Quebec-wide study on bladder cancer is published in this month's Journal of Urology.
"It's clear some patients are waiting beyond the safety margin."
If you didn't know anything about the horror that is the government-run health care system in Canada, this story about waiting lists for orthopedic surgery in British Columbia would serve as a good primer. It's all here: shortages of diagnostic machines, long waits for MRI tests, rationing of operating room hours for "elective surgery", long waits for treatment and the complete inability and unwillingness of government to meet demand with an adequate supply - which is something that free markets do every hour of every day:
In a minor league game more than a year ago, 17-year-old Maple Ridge hockey player Don Dowhaniuk took a hit and tore a ligament in his left knee.
He's still waiting for surgery, one of 19,023 B.C. residents waiting for orthopedic operations, according to the government's data.
Professional hockey players and amateurs with affluent parents can afford to pay for such operations at private clinics. It's not an option for members of the Dowhaniuk family, although they did pay $550 for an MRI after waiting six months to no avail for one in the public system. But finding $5,000 to $6,000 for surgery in the private system is out of the question for Jackie, a school accountant, and Jamie Dowhaniuk, a construction framer.
[...]
Dr. Paul Wright, the surgeon Dowhaniuk waited until last July to see, and who will eventually do the operation -- now estimated to take place in the summer, 18 months after the injury -- said he has 150 patients booked for surgery and 300 others waiting for a surgical date.
"I'm embarrassed to be a Canadian orthopedic surgeon in these circumstances. But I get only one day a week of operating room at Burnaby Hospital and that means I can only clear about five cases off per week," said Wright, who specializes in the kind of surgery Dowhaniuk needs ...
"If you were building widgets in a factory and had a backlog of orders you would add more shifts, but that is not the way it is working here. The last case in the OR finishes at 3:30 p.m. and then it's used for emergency surgery," said Wright.
There are nine operating rooms in use at Burnaby Hospital; one other is used for storage.
According to the article, there are over 19 thousand people waiting for orthopedic surgery in British Columbia alone - yet surgeons are limited to one day a week in the OR, the OR is shut down to "elective" surgery at 3:30 in the afternoon and one OR at the hospital mentioned is used for storage!
Also, keep in mind that the family mentioned in the article may be unable to afford the surgery because they have already paid for "national health insurance" through high taxes - and that private insurance for covered services is outlawed (and therefore a market does not exist).
Finally, I've also been told by orthopedic surgeons in Canada that these types of injuries in teenagers often go untreated for such long periods of time that young people permanently injure their joints, develop a lifelong limp and require joint replacement operations in middle age.
"Patients with colorectal cancer wait far too long for their treatment." That is the judgment of Bob Diament, lead clinician in the field for the west of Scotland.
[...]
... patients at Wishaw General in Lanarkshire waited for more than 130 days to receive surgery or start therapy.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman knows what's good for you. He recommends that the U.S adopt a Canadian-style health care system where medical care is sensibly rationed by all-knowing, all-caring health care bureaucrats. While Krugman glosses over the undeniable wait lists, sick and worried Canadians languish in long lines for diagnostic tests and "elective" surgery due to arbitrary global hospital budgets and severe shortages of technology.
However, a certain perverse logic explains some of the rationing decisions made by health care bureaucrats north of the 49th parallel.
In Canada, the longer a person waits for a diagnostic test that enables a doctor to definitively diagnose cancer - the longer that person is kept off the politically-sensitive waiting list for cancer treatment - and the better their decrepit and inhumane system looks.
HEALTH bosses told a North Wales gran she might have to wait until May 2007 for a hearing test.
Retired Caerwys social worker Alice Price asked Ysbyty Glan Clwyd for an ear test after growing concerned about her hearing.
But the grandma-of-eight was shocked to learn she may have to wait a full 15 months before even being seen at the Bodelwyddan hospital.
[...]
A letter sent by the Conwy & Denbighshire NHS Trust to 71-year-old Mrs Price this week read: "The current waiting list for this kind of appointment is 15 months."
Mum-of-four Mrs Price said: "I rang them up and told them this must be a joke. The woman on the other end said, very po-faced, 'We don't do jokes'.
Even high-risk, drop-dead-any-day patients like Shaun Halfpenny, have to wait months to get urgent heart treatment under Britain's fully socialized health care system:
ONE of Cumbria's best known headteachers is waiting for a heart bypass operation.
Shaun Halfpenny, headteacher of Cummersdale School, said: "Having been told by the doctor I could drop dead I'm not very happy about it but I just want it over and done with."
[...]
Mr Halfpenny is now on a cancellations list.
He said: "I've been told I'm a very high risk patient."
The teacher had to wait four months to see a heart specialist in the UK after suffering a heart attack in Canada while on a family holiday last August.
[...]
He said: "I'm very angry. They missed me off the list. I should have known this last September."
The Health Minister of Ontario, George Smitherman is threatening the use of physical force to stop businessman Don Copeman from selling health care services to long-suffering, long-waiting Canadians.
Ontario's health minister says government lawyers are examining what legal tools there are to restrict the activities of a Vancouver-based private health-care company.
George Smitherman says Copeman Healthcare Inc. could break federal and provincial law when it opens three clinics in Ontario this summer. The company plans to charge patients $3,500 to register at the clinics in Toronto, Ottawa and London, and hopes to open eight more across Canada by 2007.
A legal opinion prepared for the Ontario Health Coalition suggests Copeman undermines medicare by giving patients quick access to care based on ability to pay.
Goodness knows, Canadians should be prevented from spending their own money to get quick access to health care and should instead be forced to wait in line for shoddy government-provided, "free" medical services.
Terry Savage has a good HSA primer over at the Chicago Sun-Times:
The health care system contains some bad incentives. Because employers or their health insurance suppliers are picking up the tab, individuals have absolutely no incentive to contain their health care costs. There's no tax-deduction incentive for individuals to buy health insurance policies because individuals can't deduct the premiums.
[...]
HSAs combine a high deductible health insurance policy and a tax-favored savings account. Instead of buying a health insurance policy with a $250 deductible, you'd buy a policy with a $5,000 deductible. It sounds scary, but that policy costs much less. The money you or the company saves on insurance premiums -- as much as 40 percent of traditional costs -- can go into a special, tax-deductible savings account and be used to pay for medical expenses tax-free. Unspent money grows for future years' expenses.
Advocates of government-run medicine should always be asked to point to a single nationalized health system that has not experienced financial crisis, health care rationing and long waits for procedures that are obtained relatively quickly in the U.S. Here are some recent news items from the U.K. describing the state of medicine under that country's National Health Service (NHS):
Mrs Heylings collapsed in severe pain on holiday in Tenerife in May last year but was told she faced a wait of up to nine months for NHS surgery. However, the gallstone - which measured more than an inch - caused her such agony she decided to use her savings to pay for a private operation.
Surgeons employed by a Kent NHS trust have been left to "twiddle their thumbs" after staff were told to delay operations to save money, an MP claims.
Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark has said leaked internal memos show staff at three hospitals were ordered to put off non-urgent operations until 31 March.
[...]
All surgery on children classed as non-urgent is also being delayed.
Meanwhile consultants have been banned from giving outpatient appointments and GPs are banned from giving hospital outpatient appointments until further notice.
A PATIENT died after an ambulance took SEVEN HOURS to transfer him between hospitals just 45 minutes apart.
Joe Walsh, 46, was only being moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow. But he was left languishing in the back of a transport ambulance while it dropped off other patients in Livingston, Kilmarnock and Ayr.
Claire - formerly David - Eastwood, 48, was told by doctors more than a year ago that she faces a six-year wait on the NHS to get the surgery she needs to transform her life.
Following the diagnosis in October 2004, that she was a woman born as a man, Ms Eastwood was told she would have wait up to three years just for her first appointment at the Leeds Gender Identity Clinic.
Viewers of our film Dead Meat will remember Susan Warner as the Canadian woman in Calgary who waited 18 months for knee surgery. During her long wait for medical treatment, she endured excruciating, bone-on-bone pain as a result of the loss of the cartilage in her knee. In order to tolerate the pain, her doctor prescribed large doses of narcotic pain relievers such as Oxycontin while telling her that she would "most likely" become addicted. Susan finally got her surgery, but was by then hopelessly addicted to the drugs.
I just received the good news from Susan that after many months of detox hell, she is finally drug-free and has her life back.
Advocates of socialized medicine often use dishonest, out-of-context comparisions of life expectancy averages in Canada and the U.S. to make the fallacious argument that Canadians receive a higher quality of care than Americans while ignoring the fact that much of what modern medicine provides is increased quality of life. Joint replacement surgery, for the most part, is not necessary to live and the Canadian medical system did not consider Susan's condition an emergency. She was not going to die if she didn't receive prompt treatment - so she had to wait - and suffer - while the Canadian system rationed health care.
Aging baby boomers should keep this in mind as health care increasingly becomes the central domestic policy debate in this country.
Apparently, doctors in Germany are chafing under the conditions imposed on them by government to provide the health care services that the citizens of the country have a "right" to:
Christoph Heinrich, an anesthetist making 25,000 euros ($30,295) a year in the northern German town of Jever, works two weeks each month at a private hospital in Britain to supplement his income.
"I was making less than a skilled tradesman," Heinrich, 51, said in a telephone interview from Berlin as he joined a march against government plans to curb public-health costs. "I couldn't do it anymore.''
[...]
"My professional existence is on the line,," said Christa Schmaler, 55, a neurologist and psychologist who has a practice in Gruben, about 70 kilometers south of Frankfurt/Oder near the Polish border. '"My savings will allow me to continue one more year."
Schmaler has asked her landlord to lower the rent. She also canceled her life and pension policies.
[...]
"We are so deeply frustrated we are thinking about emigrating," said Christel Robotham, 53, who runs a specialist cardiology practice with her English husband Charles, 58, in the south-west German town of Neustadt, near Mannheim.
She estimates the practice generates about half the income it did 10 or 15 years ago because of a drop in the amount paid by health insurers for state patients. Robotham now uses money generated from private patients to subsidize the treatment of those in the state health system.
The wait for "free" government dental care is a little long in one U.K. city:
Patients' options are severely limited because there are currently no dentists taking on new NHS patients in the town. The choice is to sign up with a private dentist, or add your name to a 4,000-strong waiting list to register with an NHS dentist.
Sure, the new "pay-or-play" law passed by the Maryland legislature hurts Wal-Mart shareholders and employees as Arnold Kling, Donald Luskin and TigerHawk point out. However, many on the left don't care as it serves to increase the pain inflicted on corporations in a bid to enlist them as supporters of government-run health insurance as the execrable Ezra Klein admits:
On the other hand, I'm all for watching 50 states pass bad policies much like this one. And only partly because I'm a hack. The end game here isn't, or at least shouldn't be, better health benefits from Wal-Mart, but an eventual national insurance policy that severs the tie between employers and health care and brings coherency to our fractured, inefficient, and inequitable system. But until behemoths like Wal-Mart and the smaller businesses exempted from this mandate lose their ability to hide from health costs, they'll never sign on. Force them to pay, however, and the choice becomes expending precious resources to administer their own plans or paying a smaller surcharge to let the government do it for them. And that should clarify things real quick.
Update: Lefty filmmaker Jim Gilliam is in the same amoral camp.
Writing in this morning's New York Times, Paul Krugman expounds (subscription required) on last week's diabetes series (see my earlier commentary) with his typical mantra that the individual is helpless and that only government can make decisions about what's good for you:
... people who are forced to pay for medical care out of pocket don't have the ability to make good decisions about what care to purchase.
His opinion is that since some people do not take the responsibility of thinking for themselves and making decisions in their own interest, everyone must turn over life-and-death decisions about health care (and an even larger portion of their income) to government bureaucrats.
The New York Times ran an informative four-part series last week detailing the deadly toll taken by type 2 diabetes on various New York City neighborhoods. As the stories show, long-term disease management can be relatively costly and difficult to stick with.
The series spotlights the alleged failures of a health care system adept at providing expensive - and more profitable - acute care such as amputations and dialysis for the life-threatening complications that arise from long-term diabetes while failing to consistently provide disease management functions like counseling, education and periodic 'A1c' blood sugar tests.
Missing, however, is any emphasis on the personal responsibility of those who have diabetes to monitor and control their condition. The articles present a long parade of victims who are helpless to resist fast-food restaurant advertising, unable to control their urges, unwilling to change old habits, unmotivated to exercise (even though Central Park is adjacent to East Harlem, the epicenter of the diabetes epidemic) and even defiant:
"Listen, if I want to eat a piece of cake, I'm going to eat it," she said. "No doctor can tell me what to eat. I'm going to eat it, because I'm hungry. We got too much to worry about. We got to worry about tomorrow. We got to worry about the rent. We got to worry about our jobs. I'm not going to worry about a piece of cake."
Certainly, no one disputes the difficulty of managing a chronic disease like diabetes while coping with the other challenges of life. However, to imply that the health care system - and society - has failed these people is risible.
Mrs Moreland, of Mottram, says some practices will only take on children and residents who claim benefits.
"I've paid national insurance and tax all my life yet I can't get NHS dental treatment, it's bad management. I've been trying to find lists of charges for private treatment but it's all so expensive."
Socialized health care systems sometimes make it easier for people to use the health care system in a frivolous manner (since they're not paying for it anyway):
Doctors in San Diego county are dropping out of Medicare, Medicaid and the field of medicine altogether:
In Escondido, internist Dr. Akber Safi said he quit his practice in June because the "Medicare, Medi-Cal and insurance company bureaucracy wouldn't allow me to do what I'm trained to do - take care of patients." He has opened an import-export business.
While Stuart Gitlow M.D., in an email to me this week, asked this rhetorical question:
What I don't understand is why people don't understand that while physicians may not have political power, they certainly have the power of choice to leave medicine, or not enter it in the first place.
Some San Diego county residents are starting to understand.
With the latest reports of health care spending in the U.S rising to an all-time high, its always useful to look to the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) as an example of what not to do in order to reduce health care costs: have government ration care.
Here's an eloquent statement by a physician, Stuart Gitlow M.D., that I received permission to post today. Informed Americans should know that we have been warned:
Currently, we take the kids that do the best in high school, then do the best in college, then do the best on their MCATS, then don't mind being $200k in debt and having no income until they're 30 or so, then require them to pay massive malpractice liability payments each year, jump through outrageous regulatory hurdles, and follow recurrent training guidelines and requirements. And then we say: "we're going to lower your pay." I don't think so. I think you'll get an entire generation to say, "Take a hike." You'll then end up with whomever you can get to be a doctor, and we'll see a rapid deterioration in quality of care and a large number of would-have-been-doctors going off to do other things. I run a cash-only practice, so I don't care from a business standpoint. Patients pay at the time they're seen. The business aspect couldn't be easier; I charge less than most docs and I net more, all without turning anyone away. But since so many docs are reluctant these days to try that type of practice, I fear for the changes in the wind. The changes won't change my practice at all, but they'll sure change what kind of healthcare I can obtain in 20 years for the worse.
This month's issue highlights our short film Dead Meat:
On the Fence Films, founded by technology entrepreneur Stuart E. Browning and lawyer Blaine Greenberg, says it is working to create a new breed of political documentary that informs, entertains, and considers points of view different from those offered by The New York Times, CBS News, and other major media outlets.
[...]
Before his unexpected death in March 2005, Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Conrad F. Meier, managing editor emeritus of Health Care News, was actively involved with the On the Fence Films crew in producing the documentary. Many other proponents of consumer-directed health care reform--including David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute and Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute--also worked on the film.
"Dead Meat will be compulsory viewing for all Americans who have a love affair with a Canadian-syle single payer system," said Pipes.
While the advocates of 'single-payer' blather on about the "canard of waiting lists in the UK and Canada" - reality continues to mock them - and the victims of socialized medicine suffer - needlessly.
Here's a sampling from the British press in just the last few weeks:
While perusing U.S Census Bureau Health Insurance Data (great fun for the whole family!) - I came upon some numbers that might provide a little counterbalance to all the "45 million uninsured and without access to health care" propaganda that we keep hearing:
More than one third of all the uninsured are members of households with over $50K in annual income. Indeed, nearly one fifth hail from households pulling down more than $75K a year.
People without Health Insurance By Household Income
Left-wing blogger Ezra Klein wrote me to say that my article detailing the mendacity of the New York Times' Paul Krugman was itself just a pack of lies and that I have it all wrong on Canadian health care:
.. you just offered up a lot of lies, half-truths, and myths. ... the idea that Canada doesn't treat sick and ill people (obviously wrong -- it's America where folks forego treatment, Canada treats absolutely everyone, no exceptions) ...
Unfortunately, the egalitarian paradise that he and others defend so passionately routinely rations health care so that patients wait inhumane periods of time - something that does not happen in the U.S.
Take for example this Canadian woman who will wear a bag for the rest of her life after doctors removed her bladder:
She was on a waiting list for the implantation of a bladder stimulator device for years. The reason the wait time was so long is that the bureaucrats who administer the Canadian health care system arbitrarily decided that the hospital where she would receive the operation could do only 12 of these types of operations per year. She was number 32 on the waiting list. Do the math.
She waited for three years in pain until the bladder atrophied so much that it had to be removed.
Yes, she was able to go to the doctor all she wanted. She didn't even have to pay anything. Not even a co-payment! However, as Dr. Jane Orient says "Other countries declare a right to health care. Their citizens can go to the doctor all the time, but the doctors can't do very much. Access for all means access to nothing."
The government-run global budgeting system that the Canadian authorities use to fund hospitals (and ration care) is precisely the prescription that Klein and others like him recommend for the American health care system.
Update:
I have received an email from Ezra Klein informing me that he does not advocate a Canadian-style system here in the U.S and instead advocates a French-style "multipayer" system with an expansion of FEHBP tied to wage subsidization as an interim solution.
Although I'm not an official member of the Krugman Truth Squad, New York Times editorial page columnist Paul Krugman churns out enough mendacity and innuendo to keep a truth army occupied - so I'm just getting around to doing my part in response to his November 7 column in which he declares national health insurance the "obvious solution" to the problems in our health care system. Obvious, that is, if you accept Krugman's "facts" at face value:
Let's start with the fact that America's health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.
In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care. Canada spent $2,931; Germany spent $2,817; Britain spent only $2,160. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than any of these countries.
What Krugman doesn't say is that its easy to hold down health care costs if you do what Canada does: withhold medical treatment from sick and injured people. The U.S health care system could save billions of dollars if we drastically reduced the number of doctors, hospitals, outpatient clinics, medical devices and diagnostic machines available. If we followed Canada's lead, we would severely limit each surgeon's allotted hours in the operating room so that they couldn't perform too many surgeries. Americans would wait months and years for critical medical tests and treatments - many would suffer greatly, become crippled, addicted to painkillers, go blind or die while waiting - however, the country would spend a lot less money on health care.
Last week we noted the case of of a British woman waiting to have her gall bladder removed who had her surgery cancelled five times - and was still waiting.
A man whose wife has been in pain for more than a year and is still waiting for an operation has slammed the NHS.
Rachel Edmondson, 23, from Stevenage, is still waiting for gall bladder surgery despite first visiting Lister Hospital in November 2004.
Rachel told The Comet: "It has completely ruined my life."
...
Rachel's husband Graham said a host of clerical errors have occurred during the year and he has labelled the NHS "completely incompetent".
He said: "This has been going on for months. No one seems to care. Rachel's quality of life is non-existent. We are at our wits end and this is completely destroying our lives."
A woman whose operation to remove her gall bladder was cancelled five times has criticised her treatment by the National Health Service (NHS) as a "shambles".
Nine months is a long time in any life but, for a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, it must seem like an eternity. It is simply too long to be left worrying about the chances of survival and what the future might hold for family members.
Is there any wonder that the breast cancer mortality ratio in the U.K is 46% compared to 25% in the U.S.?
Live scorpions in the OR, rat tails in the soup, long waiting lists for treatment ...
Repeated government efforts to overhaul the public health sector, and minimise long treatment waiting lists, have had limited success in eliminating a general disdain for state hospitals.
Though entitled to free public health care, Greek taxpayers pick private clinics whenever they can.
And yet we keep hearing that the U.S. is inexplicably and inexcusably the only industrialized nation without a nationalized, government-run health system.
In the Canadian province of Winnipeg, the wait for an MRI is measured in months and sometimes years. The provincial government has not been quick about clearing this backlog.
However, the government can move quick when a private entrepreneur attempts to offer MRIs within 48 hours for - gasp! - a PROFIT!
More than 40 patients are already lined up to pay $695 each for a MRI. For that price, they get a scan within 48 hours, as opposed to waiting for months or even more than a year in the government system.
Manitoba Health Minister Tim Sale has said he may fine the Maples Surgical Centre if its MRI scanner is used to let people jump the queue in the public system. Maples owner Dr. Mark Godley has vowed to fight those fines in court.
...
"We have gone ahead and booked patients for (today),'' he said. "We're going to put politics and policy aside and treat patients who need care. We're going to deliver the services they need and give them a choice."
Godley said he received a letter from the province yesterday telling him he could be subject to prosecution if he sells health services to Manitobans insured under the public health system. But a defiant Godley said he will begin offering the scans today.
Godley said he's not sure what to expect when he opens his clinic this morning. "It's quite possible (the province) will physically try and prevent (the scans) from happening,'' he said.
Last night, a spokesman for Sale said the province will be monitoring what happens at Maples Surgical Centre today.
He would not say what the province will do if the scans go ahead.
It's a safe assumption that Terrance Cunningham doesn't have health insurance. But that hasn't stopped him from getting health care - even while on the run as a fugitive from the law as reported in the New York Post on Monday ("Sick Con Job" By Jeane MacIntosh):
A dangerous fugitive drug dealer with a bum kidney is using unwitting New York dialysis docs to help him dodge the law
...
Convicted Bronx-born crack dealer Terrance Cunningham, 37, turns up at city hospitals and clinics to get free, life-sustaining kidney dialysis treatments
...
"He waits until he is nearly on his death bed, then shows up at a facility for emergency dialysis treatment," said a squad spokesman. "He knows the doctor can't refuse to treat him"
...
The cunning con went on the lam in 2001, after a North Carolina court allowed him
time to get a kidney transplant before going to prison.
...
Instead, he disappeared in New York, where possibly suffering complications from the transplant, he needs dialysis.
If you have information about the whereabouts of Mr. Cunningham, call the U.S. Marshals Service at 1-866-WANTED2 - so that he can get on a regular dialysis schedule.
Canadians are still waiting to find out how long the government thinks they should wait for health care. Now that the government has determined how long the wait time should be for cardiac care, cancer care, orthopedic and cataract surgery - Canadians, unfortunately, are still waiting to find out how long the wait for diagnostic tests should be:
Suspiciously, no benchmarks were provided for the fifth area the feds and provinces agreed to target -- access to diagnostic tests such as CAT scans and MRIs.
This is particularly disturbing because CAT scans and MRIs are vital diagnostic tools for three of the four other areas targeted for wait times reduction -- cancer treatment, cardiac disease and hip and knee replacements.
Suspicious indeed. After all, if you've got to wait months to get an MRI to determine if you've got cancer - you're not yet officially waiting for cancer treatment. That wait doesn't begin until you know for sure that you have cancer.
Hospital bosses have apologised after maggots were found crawling in and out of an unconscious patient's nose.
Christine Ellison was in intensive care when her daughter, Nyree Ellison Anjos, made the revolting discovery.
Ms Ellison Anjos told Sky News: "I could see her nose was bothering her.
"I thought there was something not quite right so I had a closer look and I could see maggots crawling in and out of her nose."
"It was heartbreaking to see that," she added. "There's no way an apology can get that out of my mind."
A statement from Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust said: "We would like to offer our sincere apologies to the family of Mrs Ellison for any distress caused by this incident.
What's she complaining about? At least the health care in the U.K. is "free at the point of delivery"!
Richard Ralston over at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine has a new column up that should be read by anyone tempted to believe the dangerous nonsense that we constantly hear about a "right to health care":
... those who might be relieved to learn that they are not responsible for the cost of their own health care would soon discover that they have become responsible for the cost of everyone else's.
The talk about a "right" to health care really means that no one should have the right to any health care at all except through the government.
It's not too long - only six paragraphs - and well worth a few minutes of your time.
Inevitably, government control of health care leads to shortages, rationing and government control over private lives. In the U.K. - just as in Canada.
Check out this story of desperation under the British National Health Service (NHS):
One of the most decorated British fighter pilots of the Second World War has sold his medals, diaries and other memorabilia partly to pay for a hip replacement operation for his wife who faced at least a six-month wait on the National Health Service.
People who are grossly overweight, who smoke heavily or drink excessively could be denied surgery or drugs following a decision by a Government agency yesterday.
The government-run health care system in Canada has decided that heroin injection sites are a priority while the long waits for health care experienced by non-junkies have become the number one issue (see here, here and here) in Canada's upcoming elections.
In one recent Miami case, patients were recruited and then paid kickbacks to visit certain clinics where two doctors allegedly would write unnecessary prescriptions for drugs that fight AIDS. The prescriptions were filled under the Medicaid program, but the drugs were then delivered to another pharmacy and resold at a profit.
A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed a 93-year-old woman on Vancouver Island in Canada, who had recently faced a near two-year-wait just to get an appointment with a specialist to discuss the possibility of receiving a hip replacement operation. The truth of the matter is that she would have never received the operation and would have waited for the rest of her life in pain had she not gone to the U.S. to get the operation - for which she paid $25K and received in a matter of a few weeks. Her words to me were "I was going downhill fast. I didn't have much of a future. Going to the U.S. for the surgery saved my life."
Not long ago the British Government took on a Health Care Hog who wanted to live on a feeding tube ON THE STATE'S DIME! This horrendous man, the so-called English Patient, sued to ensure that he will not be forced to endure death by dehydration when his paralysis kicks in. The socialist system must and will crush him like a bug for the sake of the common good! Indeed, if everyone in England gets a feeding tube, there won't be enough money for social equality programs and global warming studies!
The socialized health care systems in Canada and Europe severely ration health care to those who need it most: the elderly. The proponents of "single-payer" national health insurance here in the U.S. need to explain to us why such a system - that depends on euthanasia as a cost containment measure - should be considered "noble".
The Bush administration is headed for a clash with the nation's doctors over a federal plan to cut their Medicare fees by 4.4 percent next year, even as the government tries to measure the quality of care they provide.
[...]
Doctors said it was absurd for Medicare to cut their fees at a time when their costs were rising. The effects of such cuts will be compounded, they said, because many private insurers and some state Medicaid programs link their payment rates to the Medicare fee schedule.
Dr. Duane M. Cady, chairman of the American Medical Association, said: "Physicians cannot absorb the pending draconian cuts. A recent A.M.A. survey indicates that if the cuts begin on Jan. 1, more than one-third of physicians would decrease the number of new Medicare patients they accept."
[...]
Dr. Stephen C. Albrecht, a family doctor in Olympia, Wash., said 20 percent of his patients were on Medicare. If payments are cut next year, he said, it would be "economic nonsense" for him to continue participating in the program.
We are seeing the inevitable consequence of government funding of health care. Once the idea of health care as a "right" becomes ingrained, people will want the "best health care that someone else's money can buy". Costs soar, governments demand sacrifice, and doctors are reduced to the role of civil servants. As physicians continue to leave the field, supporters of increased government involvement in medicine would do well to contemplate the future likelihood of themselves lying on a table being operated on by a new breed of surgeon ... one with the mentality of a postal worker.
Don Copeman, a Canadian businessman has just opened Canada's first members-only, primary health care center in Vancouver where doctors will actually be paid well for their life-saving skills and patients will pay an enrollment fee and an annual charge to get timely and high-quality care that is not available to them under the Canadian health care system. Such an event would not be particularly newsworthy here in the U.S. - however, in Canada, the notion that some people would be allowed to pay for better health care is at odds with a thoroughly ingrained egalitarianism that would rather see everyone suffer equally rather than have a "two-tier" medical system. His hybrid business model mixes private payment for extra services while conforming to the Canada Health Act for services paid for by the government - and has drawn fire from predictable quarters, some of whom would like to see the government shut the clinic down.
Patients who need surgical procedures covered by the Canada Health Act may be out of luck however, unless they like waiting in line - or enlist the services of Rick Baker's Timely Medical Alternatives, a Vancouver-based firm that specializes in negotiating surgical rates and taking waiting and suffering Canadians across the border to the U.S. to get timely medical care. (Viewers of our film Dead Meat may remember that Rick Baker is briefly profiled there).
Apologists for the Canadian "single-payer" health care system consistently point out that people only wait for elective surgery not for emergencies. Of course, "elective" surgery can mean an urgently needed bypass operation like the one that Diane Gorsuch - whose son Sean appears in our movie Dead Meat - waited two years for and died without getting. However, if you want an up-to-date report on the truth of this claim read Christie Blatchford's article in today's Globe and Mail which enumerates some of the victims of socialism in Ontario emergency rooms in the last few months. To summarize:
An elderly woman triaged as 'Level 3' meaning she should be seen within 30 minutes, waits three hours in the ER, gives up, goes home and dies.
An otherwise healthy man in his 60's with bleeding in the brain requires a transfer to another hospital, however, that hospital has no available beds, he is sent home to wait for a bed, waits four days, comes back again with emergency bleeding, and dies.
A 61-year-old woman arrives with abdominal pain, she is deemed too ill to go home, no beds are available however, gives up and goes home, comes back the next day, suffers a heart attack and is now on life support.
A 50-year-old man arrives with chest pain, symptoms deemed 'life-threatening' meaning that he should be seen in 15 minutes. Waits one hour and 40 minutes before being seen by a doctor who discovers that he had a heart attack and experienced greater heart damage due to waiting.
The average Canadian - not just the rich - pays almost 50% of their income in taxes while the defenders of the collectivist status quo invariably protest that the system has been starved of funding and that an increase in taxes is what is required. One has to wonder what level of taxation they would consider too high.
Lots of health care policy discussions over at Dr. Helen. I find this comment especially insightful:
I would never want my healthcare determined by the government--just think of the political ramifications of it--women with pink ribbons would be advocating for their "rights" to more money spent on breast cancer and being a big voting block--they might get more money for treatment than say, people with heart problems etc. It is a mistake to politicize healthcare more than we already have.
If you doubt it, consider this transexual advocacy group campaigning to have Sex Reassignment Surgery covered by the provincial health plan in Ontario - a province where elderly people go blind waiting for rationed cataract operations. Don't laugh - they have a powerful friend in Health Minister George Smitherman:
Health Minister George Smitherman had promised to reinstate coverage when the Liberals were in opposition, and he criticized the Mike Harris Conservatives for delisting sexual reorientation surgery in the late 1990s.
"I have considerable empathy with the situation that's there for those individuals," said Smitherman, who is openly gay.
"I know many of them personally, and I think they are some of the most courageous people that I know in society."
Also, check out this story about a four-year-old boy in Newfoundland, Canada with cancer who faced a two and a half year wait for an MRI scan - and imagine if a private-sector business like Walmart distributed inventory in this way:
With politicians concerned about waiting times, Health Minister John Ottenheimer says help is on the way for patients waiting for MRI services.
Ottenheimer says a new MRI machine will be available, in Corner Brook.
However, that new machine will operate 800 kilometres away from the Oldfords, on the west coast, in Premier Danny Williams' district.
Dawe says the location of the MRI was picked for political, not health reasons. The MRI is far away from the province's cancer clinic, tertiary hospitals and most medical expertise.
Indeed, in a politicized, government-run health care system like Canada's where market forces do not operate, it's all about pull, influence, connections and raw political power. Advocates of health care freedom would do well to remember this when confronted by the proponents of government-run medicine who describe their proposed system as a "noble idea".
Imagine that you and your doctor strongly suspect that you may have cancer. An MRI or a CAT scan will tell the doctor whether to perform a biopsy. In Canada, where the government provides all funding for medical technology - and where there are severe shortages of such diagnostic machines, the wait for an MRI or CAT scan is often measured in months - and sometimes years!
An American entrepreneur is betting that mobile diagnostic imaging clinics - MRI machines on tractor-trailers - would be in demand among Canadians who are currently on waiting lists. (See MRIs on wheels proposed for Canada.) He's seeking permission from the government of Ontario to bring in three to five trucks providing this service. Alas, there may be a problem. Paying for your own health care is not allowed in Canada - and Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman wants to make sure that it stays that way.
A spokesman for George Smitherman, the Health Minister, said the province would be unlikely to give a green light ... "Entertaining this sort of idea is not something we're interested in," said David Spencer, an aide to Mr. Smitherman.
In Canada, you can spend your own money on a large home, a luxury car or a grand European tour. You can spend your own money on pornography, alcohol or tattoo parlors. However, when it comes to your own body, you must get in a long line for "free" government health care.
