OUR VIEW: A look at Canada's health care plan

NOTE: Gazette editorial/opinion writers keep hearing about the wonders of Canada’s government health care system. If it works in the interest of patients, it defies fundamental economic principles. To learn how it works, The Gazette recently interviewed Canadian health care consumers in Vancouver, B.C., and a man who saves lives by connecting his fellow Canadians with American doctors, hospitals and clinics. The editorial below kicks off a short series:

In Canada, where government considers health care a right, a law called the Canada Health Act forbids health care providers from charging for medically necessary services. Instead of doctors charging patients, the government allocates a specific budget each year for clinics and hospitals to operate and serve the needs of patients.

To America’s uninsured, this may sound like Nirvana. It means anyone in any financial condition can walk in off the street for treatment of any condition, with government paying the cost. Coverage, however, doesn’t always result in care.

If one tries to reconcile Canada’s program with ages-old economic principles, it doesn’t add up. If government forbade hair salons from charging, but paid them to provide haircuts free-of-charge for all, clients would be liabilities to the business. Each customer would be a consumer of salon resources, rather than a buyer who contributes to economic stability. It would benefit each salon to minimize haircuts, in order to survive by stretching limited resources. Failing to stretch the resources would jeopardize the salon’s ability to pay expenses associated with running the business. Any successful business model would emphasize haircut rationing, creating waiting lists that put patients off for months, or even years.

Socialized hair care would inconvenience people otherwise accustomed to receiving same-day haircuts. That would be a shame. Hair would grow too long. Socialized medicine, however, allows cancer to grow and people to die on waiting lists.

“The Canada Health Act is responsible for more pain, suffering and death than any other legislation in Canadian history,” said Rick Baker, a Canadian who helps patients find timely and affordable care in the United States.
In the United States, most medical consumers are paying customers. The patient pays out of pocket, or pre-pays with fees to an insurance pool.

Either way, a patient generates cash for the hospital or clinic. The cost of serving those with no ability to pay is typically included in the prices paid by those who are able to pay.

In the United States, the average medical consumer is an asset to the medical provider. Because the consumer is an asset, in the form of a paying customer, he or she receives quick and professional treatment. To attract more customers, a clinic or hospital must develop a good reputation through customer satisfaction. It must invest in top-of-the line diagnostic and surgical equipment. In the United States, where medical consumers are assets to providers, medical care and equipment is abundant.

In Canada, each medical consumer is a liability. The patient is not a source of income, as in the United States. Instead, the patient is a drain on a fixed amount of financial resources provided by government. Diagnostic equipment, such as state-of-the-art CT and MRI scanners, are not good investments. They are costs that draw down on limited government funds, and do nothing to generate income. As a result, they are scarce.

In coming editions of The Gazette, this column will tell the stories of patients whose suffering ended, and whose lives were saved, after Baker found them help in America — in clinics and hospitals that bid on the patients and viewed them as assets.

These patients have asked us to tell their stories, expressing their hope that health care in the United States will never resemble Canada’s system. If it does, they say, more Canadians will die while waiting months and years on waiting lists. Without America’s for-profit health care system, they would have no place to go.