Which parts of Canada’s or Europe’s health care shall we emulate?

September 8th, 2007 | by Brian |

That’s what I ask in an eLetter at published in the Denver Post’s website:

Re: “Taking care of our own,” Sept. 6 Pius Kamau column

Dr. Pius Kamau (Opinion, Sept. 5) suggests we “copy those parts of the Canadian and European systems that best suit us.” But which parts?

Surely it’s not timely medical care. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that in Ontario, “109 people had a heart attack or suffered heart failure while on the waiting list. Fifty of those patients died.”

Perhaps it’s doctors’ working conditions? Yet a former President of the Canadian Medical Association told the New York Times that “physicians across Canada are in an advanced stage of burnout due to work conditions” which “causes them to retire early…or simply leave.”

Or perhaps surviving diseases? But the American Cancer Society reported that “U.S. patients have better survival rates than European patients for most types of cancer.”

History has shown that government-controlled economies fail. Compare thriving West Germany and South Korea to desolate East Germany and North Korea. Medicine is no exemption. As my free-market proposal to the 208 Commission (”FAIR,” at WhoOwnsYou.org) shows, our medical care suffers from too much government interference, not too little. Effective reform requires eliminating government controls that prevent free markets from delivering quality, low-cost medical care — just as they provide other essential goods and services.

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