A Canadian choice for American healthcare

Enter Stage Right ^ | September 1, 2003 | Pete Vere

[Theosis]

The experience was typical of most of my previous experiences growing up in Canada under socialized healthcare. After a three-and-half-hour wait in a small room overcrowded with sick children, we finally saw the lone doctor on staff that evening. The examination room was nowhere as spacious as what I had become accustomed to in the United States, and even more tellingly, nowhere nearly as well equipped. Unlike my previous experiences growing up in Canada, now that I had tasted American healthcare both the wait and the quality of service seemed unbearable. In the United States, I have never waited longer than fifteen minutes when visiting a healthcare provider. Over the next few days, my wife and I wondered whether spending nearly four hours in a closely confined space with other sick children would make our daughter's condition worse.

[Agnes Heep]

Only one full-time medical specialist, assisted by a part-time out-of-towner, practiced in my relative's community.

I live in Dover, Delaware, a very small community with a population less than 30,000. Yet we have our own neurologist, who runs a professional association that includes seven or eight M.D.s and a PA. He owns or leases a mobile MRI unit with an imaging specialist that travels between his various offices in the small towns of downstate Delaware. When I needed an MRI I got it locally within two and one half weeks, and had the results days later.

Another cost of the Canadian health care system lies in the way it drains resources from other institutions, especially the military. Canada now relies fully on the United States for national defense, which is a fact of which Canadians should be heartily ashamed. The tax burden necessary to support the health care system saps the economy of productivity and resources that aren't missed because they're never seen. The entire thing is a fiasco, which Americans should fight tooth and nail to avoid.