Your time or your money - universal healthcare
One of the "perks" of business travel is that the hotels that I stay in often will provide free newspapers; generally USA Today comes to the room's door or one can pick up the Wall Street Journal. It was in the latter that I found this editorial (paid subscription needed) about healthcare in Canada.
It summarizes the full polls / studies that it references (one by Decima Research and the other by the Fraser Institute) with this:
"More than one in three Canadian households has tried and failed to get timely access to at least one health service within the last three months"
That doesn't sound too promising for we Americans who want everything yesterday, does it? "But WAIT" (as the infomercials say), "there's MORE!" From the excerpt of the Fraser Institute:
The Fraser Institute’s fifteenth annual waiting list survey found that Canada-wide waiting times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments fell slightly in 2005, making this the first reduction in the total wait for treatment measured in Canada since 1993.
Well, this is encouraging! Maybe I was being a bit too hasty (having read about delays in Canada and in the United Kingdom where access to universal / socialized medicine is known to be rationed / regulated).
Total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, fell from 17.9 weeks in 2004 back to the 17.7 weeks last seen in 2003. This small nationwide improvement in access reflects waiting time decreases in 5 provinces, while concealing increases in waiting time in Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
Oh darn! How long do they wait?
For the mathematically challenged, 17.9 weeks is 125 days while 17.7 weeks is 124 days (think 4 months). When my doctor said I needed an MRI on Monday, I was in it at the local hospital on Thursday. There is something to be said for the capitalistic system as applied to healthcare.
Among the provinces, Ontario achieved the shortest total wait in 2005, 16.3 weeks, with Manitoba (16.6 weeks), and Alberta (16.8 weeks) next shortest. Saskatchewan, despite a dramatic 7.8 week reduction in the total wait time, exhibited the longest total wait, 25.5 weeks; the next longest waits were found in New Brunswick (24.5 Weeks) and Newfoundland (22.3 weeks).
I am amazed that ANYONE who is serious about switching our system (which does need help, but obviously not as much as this does!) needs to be cognizant of information like this. Since the Presidential silly season has begun, the first thing that came to mind was HillaryCare (thankfully a non-starter, TennCare (a disaster that has since shut down for the most part), and the new MassCare (I'm not holding my breath looking for success).
Anyways, back to the editorial's money quote (pun intended):
"At issue here is whether it is better to ration a scarce good using prices, as a free-market system would do, or using time, as is inevitably the case with nationally financed systems."
I guess it will depend on:
- Can you afford it?
- Do you have the luxury of time?
The first means having bucks or insurance; the second means patience. Which is better for society as a whole? Ask yourself this question: if you had real painful ailment (think ruptured disk in your back that would not require emergency care like a broken limb) or a time critical disease ("this tumor / cardiac condition needs attention NOW!"), would you be willing to wait 4 months for treatment to begin?
