Posted on 02/24/2010 12:55:26 PM PST by briankoe
Contrary to popular belief, American health care is not a free market system. With roughly 46 cents on the dollar coming from local, state, and federal coffers, health care providers are inclined to compete for government dollars over patient dollars. A coagulation of laws and regulations smothers the competitive process, while preventing consumers from shopping the market. With 3rd party rule, government encourages consumers to disregard costs and provokes physicians to operate on volume rather than quality. Worst of all, government deters market activity by restricting choice and competition: the agents of low prices and high quality.
British and Canadian health care are socialized disasters. Rationed care, deficit spending, primitive equipment and technology, and a lack of consumer choice are just a few atrocities of government run health care. Canada operates as a single payer health care system—government is the payer, the regulator, the ultimate decider. Rationing treatment and lengthy waiting lists kill tens of thousands of people every year. And it only gets worse. 815,000 Canadians are currently waiting for medical care; if the United States had the same health care system almost 8 million Americans would currently be waiting.
The Fraser Institute conducts an annual study, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada, that is one of the most comprehensive studies on Canadian waiting lists. Across 12 specialties and 10 provinces, wait times for surgical and therapeutic treatments average 18 weeks; the wait following a general practitioner’s referral exceeds 17 weeks. Two of the worst procedures are neurosurgery (7 months) and orthopedic surgery (10 months). Canadian oncologists recommend cancer patients receive radiation treatment within 3.4 weeks of diagnosis, yet over half wait more than 6 weeks. Waiting lists in Canada are so flagrant doctors send a third of their patients abroad, most of which receive treatment in the United States.
Government involvement is NOT the soltion to health care problems, it is THE CAUSE.
ping
the real reason that people that pay premiums pay so much is that they are subsidizing the Medicare, the Medicaid, and all the govt workers who pay little or nothing...
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