Interesting story today in the Boulder Daily Camera about the Canadian
health care crisis. Page 4B.

It's by Beth Duff-Brown of the Associated Press.

"A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need
of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It
added: 'If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased,
please accept our sincere apologies.'"

The article says the patient wasn't dead, but this letter provides cold
comfort to those who obviously do die before they get medical care in
Canada, evidently in sufficient numbers to persuade health care workers to
apologize in advance.

"The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes
each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province
to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of
every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers
Federation."

Wow! Forty-eight percent of income for health care that you can't get when
you need it. What a bargain!

"George Zeliotis told the court he suffered pain and became addicted to
painkillers during a yearlong wait for hip replacement surgery, and hsould
have been allowed to pay for faster service. His physician, Dr. Jacques
Chaoulli, said his patient's constitutional rights were violated because
Quebec couldn't provide the care he needed, but didn't offer him the option
of getting it privately."

And then there's this:

"But tell that to the hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff
for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would
have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament."

So much for the "I can get private health care whenever I want in Canada"
argument...

"[A]ccording to experts on both sides of the debate, Canada and North Korea
are the only countries with laws banning the purchase of insurance for
hospitalization or surgery."

....and you can't buy supplemental insurance to protect yourself even if you
want to. Talk about your socialistic, egalitarian "share the pain"
bedfellows...Canada and North Korea don't care a fig if you, the individual,
suffers, they only care that everyone suffers together in comradely
communistic solidarity, while paying 48% of income for the privilege. Bleah.

It also seems that the average wait time between referral and treatment has
risen from 9.3 days to 17.9 days since 1993.

What's more, the percentage of Canadians who had same-day access to a doctor
when sick or needing medical attention is the lowest (27%) of all when
compared to New Zealand (60%), Australia (54%), Britain (41%), and the
USA (33%).

And, Canada has the lowest ratio of practicing physicians per 1000 persons
(2.1) of all when compared to Italy (4.4), Belgium (3.9), France (3.3),
Australia (2.5), and the USA (2.4).

(Sources cited in the article: Fraser Institute; Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development; The Commonwealth Fund: Bank of Canada.)

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser