Government health care advocates used to sing the praises of Britain's National Health Service (NHS). That's until its poor delivery of health care services became known. A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, "Delay, Denial and Dilution," written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the NHS health care services are just about the worst in the developed world. The head of the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care. Twelve percent of specialists surveyed admitted refusing kidney dialysis to patients suffering from kidney failure because of limits on cash. Waiting lists for medical treatment have become so long that there are now "waiting lists" for the waiting list.
Government health care advocates sing the praises of Canada's single-payer system. Canada's government system isn't that different from Britain's. For example, after a Canadian has been referred to a specialist, the waiting list for gynecological surgery is four to 12 weeks, cataract removal 12 to 18 weeks, tonsillectomy three to 36 weeks and neurosurgery five to 30 weeks. Toronto-area hospitals, concerned about lawsuits, ask patients to sign a legal release accepting that while delays in treatment may jeopardize their health, they nevertheless hold the hospital blameless. Canadians have an option Britainers don't: close proximity of American hospitals. In fact, the Canadian government spends over $1 billion each year for Canadians to receive medical treatment in our country. I wonder how much money the U.S. government spends for Americans to be treated in Canada.
"OK, Williams," you say, "Sweden is the world's socialist wonder." Sven R. Larson tells about some of Sweden's problems in "Lesson from Sweden's Universal Health System: Tales from the Health-care Crypt," published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Spring 2008). Mr. D., a Gothenburg multiple sclerosis patient, was prescribed a new drug. His doctor's request was denied because the drug was 33 percent more expensive than the older medicine. Mr. D. offered to pay for the medicine himself but was prevented from doing so. The bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.
Malmo, with its 280,000 residents, is Sweden's third-largest city. To see a physician, a patient must go to one of two local clinics before they can see a specialist. The clinics have security guards to keep patients from getting unruly as they wait hours to see a doctor. The guards also prevent new patients from entering the clinic when the waiting room is considered full. Uppsala, a city with 200,000 people, has only one specialist in mammography. Sweden's National Cancer Foundation reports that in a few years most Swedish women will not have access to mammography.
Dr. Olle Stendahl, a professor of medicine at Linkoping University, pointed out a side effect of government-run medicine: its impact on innovation. He said, "In our budget-government health care there is no room for curious, young physicians and other professionals to challenge established views. New knowledge is not attractive but typically considered a problem (that brings) increased costs and disturbances in today's slimmed-down health care."
These are just a few of the problems of Sweden's single-payer government-run health care system. I wonder how many Americans would like a system that would, as in the case of Mr. D. of Gothenburg, prohibit private purchase of your own medicine if the government refused paying. We have problems in our health care system but most of them are a result of too much government. Over 50 percent of health care expenditures in our country are made by government. Government health care advocates might say that they will avoid the horrors of other government-run systems. Don't believe them.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, who published Sven Larson's paper, is a group of liberty-oriented doctors and health care practitioners who haven't sold their members down the socialist river as have other medical associations. They deserve our thanks for being a major player in the '90s defeat of "Hillary care."
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
Sounds like they have a bit of a mess. For the average American, our sucks just as bad. The outfitter in Canada where we have been going every year since 1979 has lived in both the U.S. and Canada. He has told me several times that he would never trade their system in Canada for our system. He says that while it's true than seeing a specialist in Canada can take tome but that you never have trouble with any urgent care. Outside of availability in very remote area' A problem we see in the Dakota's as well. It may be 150 miles to the nearest health care.
Outside of availability in very remote area' A problem we see in the Dakota's as well. It may be 150 miles to the nearest health care.
ah but thats by choice to where you decide to live. However, I forget her name but she is one of the most out spoken person in Canada's parliament, immediatly came to the USA for breat cancer treatment when she found a lump. That should tell you something. Secondly, US business (and American people) can't afford government run healthcare. Besides the enoumous cost, productivity levels would drastically suffer and therefore would hurt future wages. How much productivity is lost by an employee forced to wait 6 months for hip replacement?1 year for knee replacement?
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
I read somewhere that the average Swede pays out something on the order of 80% of their income in taxes because of their much vaunted social programs, sound like they aren't getting much for their money to me...
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Unless Hussein, Pelosi, Reid, Rahm and the rest are willing to wait in line with the rest of us for sub-standard gubment healthcare, then they can take theirgubment health care to their local protologist and have the doc insert it into whatever orifice he deems appropriate.
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Future DNC Message - From this point, all illegal aliens will be referred to Unregistered Democrats.
To see a physician, a patient must go to one of two local clinics before they can see a specialist. The clinics have security guards to keep patients from getting unruly as they wait hours to see a doctor. The guards also prevent new patients from entering the clinic when the waiting room is considered full. Uppsala, a city with 200,000 people, has only one specialist in mammography.
So, he creates a straw man argument and tackles it.
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immediatly came to the USA for breat cancer treatment when she found a lump. That should tell you something.
I read somewhere that the average Swede pays out something on the order of 80% of their income in taxes because of their much vaunted social programs, sound like they aren't getting much for their money to me...
You should be looking at medical costs by percentage of GDP. The U.S. is the highest.
who cares? I don't care if someone decides to save money and go to India. Why should I? It's a free country. You have a good chance of having you Xrays examined by someone in Idia now a days at night time to save costs. So what?
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[blockquote]quote:
I read somewhere that the average Swede pays out something on the order of 80% of their income in taxes because of their much vaunted social programs, sound like they aren't getting much for their money to me... [/blockquote]
You should be looking at medical costs by percentage of GDP. The U.S. is the highest.
Those numbers don't include the lost of worker productivity because they must wait 6 months to a year or more for treatment if they live at all.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
There is a myth that people have about healthcare. They think that simply having "national healthcare" solves the problem of affordable healthcare. This quickly becomes a management problem. Most people don't like the "management" solutions. Limited funds to pay for doctors? Solution: limited numbers of doctors, longer delays to get the needed procedures. Expensive new drugs. Solution: refuse to pay for these new drugs.
What I would like to see discussed -- never happen, too complicated for public discourse and would involve elected officials "killing" somebody's lovely old mother or grandmother -- would be some sort of defined care system. In this system, some low cost-high return procedures would be paid for by the state -- example vaccinations, treatment of common traumas such as cuts and broken bones (simple breaks) -- while other high cost low return procedures -- triple by-pass operations for folks in their mid-60s who have abused their bodies and made bad lifestyle choices for a long time -- would not be paid for by the state. The problem that I see with such a system is that the public would always be second guessing this system and saying that politician X who voted to place the subject limits in place "killed my Grandma Tilly who was denied a triple bypass operation that would have saved her life!" Without such limits, however, the public treasury is only safe until the state-of-the-art advances to the stage that $75,000 open hear surgery is considered peanuts in comparison with $750,000 organ reconstitution procedures are rolled out. Or when $7,500,000 organ replacements are engineered. At some point saving a life is not worth the money it costs. To those who find this calculus offensive, it the cost of a life worth one year of our US GDP? ten years of our US GDP? one hundred years of our US GDP? What can the public afford to invest in the healthcare of an individual over their entire life? It is a finite amount, and presumably linked to some fraction of the average production of our population through their whole life.
On top of your story of people choosing to go to India for treatment, our government adds 1/2 trillion to medical expenses. Here in North Carolina, the state regulates how many hospital beds that are allowed. I'm not able to decide to go into the market place and build my own 100 bed hospital. I must first wait years for them to update their study and then go through a bidding process if I wish to build my own hospital. What's up with that> MRI machinces are also tightly regulated. I'm not allowed to go into the MRI business either. Once again, I must wait for the updated study and wait for the State to determine where and how many MRI's are needed. I then must go through a bidding process to be allowed to add an MRI anywhere they feel it's needed.
Perhaps instead of our government controled healthcare that we already find ourselves in with Obama demanding more of it, we should go the other direction with a free market system and see how much better it could be.
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John Adams “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
Ronald Reagan: 'Everybody that is for abortion has already been born'
"I never said I was worth it. I only said I wouldn't do it for less " William F. Buckley Jr.
who cares? I don't care if someone decides to save money and go to India. Why should I? It's a free country. You have a good chance of having you Xrays examined by someone in Idia now a days at night time to save costs. So what?
I was rebutting your claim that a Canadian going to the U.S. for health care tells a lot about their health care system. What does it tell ya when an American goes to India or Thailand?
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Those numbers don't include the lost of worker productivity because they must wait 6 months to a year or more for treatment if they live at all.
Aren't manufacturing workers at the bottom? They can't get it now even if they wanted too. It won't hurt the economy if some marketing manager has to wait a few more weeks.
Funny thing Mouse, my sister sprained her leg or something, and the Army was going around trying to find a doctor who would say there was nothing wrong with her leg. He spent $150, and the doctor simply said you would need to go to a podiatrist.
I was also trying to bait you with the article.
"In turn, more and more U.S. hospitals are also marketing their services toward these lucrative patients, whose high-tech care tends to be pricey and is commonly fully paid by patients' governments, covered by their insurance or paid for out-of-pocket"
"But, while difficult to track, the numbers appear to have bounced back and are now hitting new highs after taking a dip following 9/11. (The influx of medical travelers from one Middle Eastern country to the United States, for instance, fell from 44% of those seeking care in 2001 to 8% in 2003 because many had trouble obtaining U.S. visas, according to the McKinsey report.) "
Why are we helping terrorists lick their wounds? They're probably coming from Qatar with their 100,000 GDP per capita. We sent all our wealth there.
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Limited funds to pay for doctors? Solution: limited numbers of doctors, longer delays to get the needed procedures.
Uh, you do know that with an NHI system, the administrative costs are substantially lower. Some of that could go towards it. Solution: tax breaks to doctors and train more. Duh. Take a crapload of the education spending and focus on health care instead. All of those countries should be able to add more since they spend less than the U.S. as a percentage of GDP.
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Expensive new drugs. Solution: refuse to pay for these new drugs.
You do know that a lot of the drugs aren't even worth near the amount they're sold at. Why do you think in Africa AIDS treatment costs is nothing compared to selling in the U.S.? They churn out a lot of painkillers when they're not even needed. The FDA is part of the problem too.
Sweden's Government Health Care
The outfitter in Canada where we have been going every year since 1979 has lived in both the U.S. and Canada. He has told me several times that he would never trade their system in Canada for our system. He says that while it's true than seeing a specialist in Canada can take tome but that you never have trouble with any urgent care. Outside of availability in very remote area' A problem we see in the Dakota's as well. It may be 150 miles to the nearest health care.
