Steyn as usual makes some good points, but yours are as valid. As someone who has worked in the healthcare system in this country for years I can guarantee you that any managed care system is all about denial of service, as much as they can get away with, in any case. The overhead administrative costs are also way out of line. I'm not a big fan of Canadian medicine, as it claimed an early death for both of my parents, but we can't pretend that we have a system that is working much better for many people in our society. Just spend some time in an inner-city hospital, and see what happens to people who cannot afford routine, preventive healthcare. Believe me, when they are diagnosed with advanced disease that could have been prevented if caught earlier on, someone pays, and it's us, in the form of higher taxes, higher healthcare premiums, and welfare for the family members deprived of their breadwinners. In the long run it costs us all more money to have these people uninsured. There has to be an answer somewhere between managed-for-profit care and the Canadian abyss. It is disingenuous to focus only on the worst of socialized medicine.
There is. But it depends on getting the government totally and completely out of the health care business.
With a pining regret, I recall when I started my first business -- in 1965. Comprehensive small business employee health care was available from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for the princely sum of $28/month -- $50 deductible, without spousal or pregnancy benefits (which were an additional $12 and $6/month, respectively, as I recall).
Consequently, it was no problem to fund health care for one's employees. And we offered the spousal and pregnancy benefits at the employee's expense as options, so that our cost per employee was the same for everybody.
Soon thereafter, the Johnson administration invented Medicare and Medicaid and began to regulate the health care industry -- encouraging, in their wisdom, the training of specialists and discouraging the training of GPs. Costs began a steady escalation, until they started becoming disproportionate and unbearable in the late eighties.
About ten years ago, around the time of Hillarycare, one of LBJ's staff admitted that the whole program had been "a tremendous mistake", which had distorted the market and raised costs across the board.
Nice of him to do so. But it was a little late...