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Uh Oh Canada (and Great Britain)

Proponents of increased government intervention in our health care system like to talk about how “broken” our system is and how “wonderful” the nationalized systems in Canada and Great Britain are. This email is a compilation of stories, statistics and other useful data for those of us who think the leftists arguments are a load of … stool samples.

Just this month, the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association admitted that Canada’s health-care system is sick, that patients are not just getting less than optimal care, but that health care professionals are “all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.”

But this isn’t big news to anyone who has been following the downfall of the kinds of national health systems that Obama and Co. yearn to impose on us.

In 2001, it was estimated that one in five British bowel cancers were curable at the time of diagnosis, but incurable by the time of treatment. In 2002, the WHO estimated that about 10,000 Brits had died unnecessarily from cancer the previous year, three times the number who died in traffic accidents.

In 2006, 875,000 Canadians were on waiting lists to see a specialist for test or treatment:
Average wait from referral to treatment by a specialist = more than four months (17.8 weeks);
Shortest wait time = more than a month (4.9 we
eks for oncology);
Longest wait time = three-quarters of a year (40.3 weeks for orthopedic surgery).

Even worse, 2006 data show that rural Canadians were waiting much longer than the median.
All Canada average wait for an ultrasound = 3.8 weeks. In Manitoba and PEI = 8 weeks.
All Canada average wait for CT scan = 4.3 weeks. In Prince Edward Island = 9 weeks.
All Canada average wait for MRI = 10.3 weeks. In Newfoundland = 28 weeks.

One obvious consequence of draconian government control is what it has always been:

1) Black market services: In Canada, private clinics are not legally allowed to provide services covered by the Canada Health Act. In British Columbia, for example, Bill 82 provides that a physician can be fined up to $20,000 for accepting fees for surgery. Still, black market clinics service patients who are willing to break the law to get treatment.

2) Shortages in professionals willing to work for government bean counters: Canada News reported in 2003 that about 10,000 doctors had left Canada during the 1990s.

3) Customers out-sourcing their business to foreign markets: In 2000, a Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that Canadians were being wooed by northern U.S. medical centers. One of the attractions? Getting and MRI in two days instead of 10 to 28 weeks. The Cleveland Clinic in O
hio is known as the hip-replacement center of Canada. The Brain and Spine Clinic in Buffalo serves about 10 border-crossing Canadians a week and a Calgary woman recently drove several hundred miles to Great Falls, Mont., to give birth to her quadruplets.

Another less obvious consequence of government control in health care is hospitals becoming Killing Fields. Remember the kashish when Sarah Palin said Section 1233 of the health care reform bill amounted to a first step toward “death panels”? Well, surprise, surprise. the British National Health Service has had a “death panel” system since 2005. Under the terms of the Mental Capacity Act, Brits unable to communicate with hospital personnel are considered to be “due to die” and are removed from all forms of life support, including food and water. (According to Catholic teaching, food and water are basic requirements, not extraordinary health care, thus it is a gross violation of medical ethics to remove them.)

Just last year, an 88-year-old retiree entered a Birmingham hospital for shoulder surgery. While recovering she caught one of the hospital-induced infections that kill 30,000 Brits a year, so her doctors declared her “due to die” and began starving and dehydrating her to death. The family demanded that treatment be resumed. The hospital threatened them with law enforcement action and effectively chased from the hospital. They returned with another doctor, obtained a
second opinion and had their mother released into their care. Once home, she recovered in short order and survives to this day.

How many times curable patients are euthanized is not clear. The Brits hardly brag about it. But it appears that “due to die” is standard procedure and is not limited to the elderly. There are several cases on record in which mentally disabled individuals have been left to die under the same circumstances: a girl whose easily-treated cancer was allowed to metastasize without treatment, a man whose broken leg festered to the point of infection and death, and a middle-aged Down’s Syndrome man who was starved to death over the period of a month after suffering a stroke.

Nationalized health care systems aren’t all bad. When the docs work on you, they do a good job. And it’s all free, except for the astronomically high taxes … and the long waits, the pain and suffering endured while waiting,  the possibility of dying because of long delays or because somebody decides you don’t deserve treatment.

So wow … what a deal!

NOT.

I totally agree with Sarah Palin. “Such a system is downright evil.”  And the next step in our country’s path towards such an evil system is currently working its way through Congress.

We need to stop it.

Sources referenced:

Do we want socialized medicine? By Walter E. Williams – Feb 14, 2007

Uh-oh, Canada By Bill Steigerwald – August 26, 2007

Overhauling health-care system tops agenda – August 15 2009

Palin v. ObamaCare By J. R. Dunn – August 20, 2009