Time sure does fly. It’s been almost two years since I called Canada’s government-run health care system “The Sick Man of the Great White North” and wrote:
Canada’s system may be the gold standard for government-run health care, but only if you’re looking for a system that can’t provide essential medical services in a timely manner.
Sadly, nothing much has changed in the interceding time between that post and now. In fact, things are very much the same: Canadians still have a system that has an undeserved good reputation, and those on the left in America still hope to implement a Canadian-style system here in the United States. It was to that end that Michael Moore released his latest “documentary,” Sicko, which essentially serves as public relations for the pro-socialized health care camp.
The idea of “free,” government-provided health care is easy to like, because who doesn’t want everyone to have free health care? Unfortunately, it also seems that many people find that the major problems with socialized health care are easy to dismiss, because, well… who doesn’t want everyone to have free health care?
So it’s important for those of us who see this idea for what it is – a very bad one – continue to remind Americans that while socialized health care is no doubt well intentioned, good intentions are not enough:
Sickoholds the Canadian system out as a model for proponents of universal coverage where health care costs are lower and everyone has free care at the point of service. “While many proclaim Canada’s Medicare program to be one of the best in the world, or suggest it should be the model for reform in the United States,” says one of the Fraser Institute’s study authors, “the reality is that health spending in Canada outpaces that in most other developed nations that, like Canada, guarantee access to care regardless of ability to pay, and yet access to health care in this country lags that available in most of these other nations.”
Because health care is largely free in Canada, demand is likely to exceed supply. It’s just human nature. Thus, waiting lists become the principal way of rationing medical care and holding down spending. And after 16 years of tracking growing waiting lists, the Fraser Institute observes that the problem is probably not a temporary one that can be fixed with a little more money or time. They note that provinces with higher spending per capita do not experience shorter wait times.
Just as we saw in the old Soviet system with its long lines for food and basic services, government central planning does not efficiently match supply with demand. And human beings will always seek more of something that is free. As one free market advocate states, “Long waits and widespread denial of needed care are a permanent and necessary part of government-run systems.”
That link comes via Hugh Hewitt.
Incidentally, how do you think Sicko is doing? Perhaps I’m just out of the movie loop at the moment, but it seems to me to have been as close as Moore has come to an outright flop, at least in terms of media chatter generated for his pet issue.
More: Jordan Ballor passes along a link to the Scriptorium, which provides a solid analysis of what a proper Biblical position on universal health care would be:
Jesus was angered at moral teaching that emphasized outward conformity to rules without moral action flowing from a heart of compassion and virtue, even if such conformity produced good results. Now the state cannot show compassion in the arena of economic justice, because a necessary condition for compassion is that it is freely given and not coerced. The state forces people to conform to rules. It takes their money and gives it to others. But this is not the sort of compassion of which Jesus taught.
Well worth a read in full.
