Free Republic

Medicine: The administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid is a fan of Britain's National Health Service and rationing services. He believes in less discretion for your doctor, more power for your government. 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open" is what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, said in an interview published in Biotechnology Healthcare in June 2009. The question is whether the Senate will confirm Berwick with open eyes. Berwick says: "NICE is...

Health Reform: The white coats showed up again at the White House, helping the administration ram health care reform down our throats. Can you have a bipartisan bill without a bipartisan vote?It didn't work the first time, when the White House last year assembled enough sympathetic medical professionals to stage a photo-op in the Rose Garden trying to persuade us that, as the commercial goes, three of four doctors really, really support the administration's attempt to nationalize health care. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, last year's event was a classic case of astroturfing. Attendance was by invitation only,...

Politics: The administration stages a photo-op with handpicked doctors who support its health care reform. Fortunately, most doctors still believe that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. It would seem some doctors still make house calls. Some 150 of them made one at the White House Monday in an attempt to give a booster shot to the administration's chaotic and stalled health care reform drive. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, this was a classic case of AstroTurfing. Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 were said to be members of Doctors...

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

Barack Obama has a high opinion of the Canadian single-payer health-care system. In March, he lamented that the only thing separating us from Canada’s system was our “legacy” of employer-based health care, and of course free markets and private contracting, neither of which have been allowed in Canada. That may account for why Canada’s system, in an effort to reduce wait times, now contracts with American providers across the border: Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act. But based on a report leaked to the...

Before Americans adopt Canadian-style health care regulations, we might want to ask Canadian doctors what they think of their system. The Canadian Medical Association gathered for its annual meeting on Sunday. Warnings from doctors to our north are important to dispel the Obama administration's claim that its government takeover is a way to get costs under control. "We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize. We know that there must be change," said Dr. Anne Doig, the Canadian Medical Association's incoming president, in an interview with the Canadian...

As President Barack Obama scours the U.S. to drum up support for reforming healthcare, the Washington Post (among others) says the White House may be willing to dump its government-run insurance plan. If so, this will have the duel effect of encouraging opponents of Obama’s goal to create a cheaper, non-profit, government-sponsored health plan for the 40 to 50 million Americans presently with no health insurance, while alienating liberal-left Democrats who seek to emulate a Canadian health system. Looked at from the outside, it’s hard to see Obama succeeding. Americans have been so conditioned for so long against anything resembling...

Vancouver, Canada’s health authority is mulling skipping over more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to close a $200 million budget shortfall, according to a report in the Vancouver Sun. The excised procedures would include a host of neurosurgeries, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures -- leaving patients waiting long periods of time for their backordered operations, said Canadian health critic Adrian Dix.

"We spend more on health care than most other countries." "We need to bring costs down." To address these complaints, enter ObamaCare -- which may or may not include a "public option" or a taxpayer-assisted "co-op" to keep insurance companies "honest." But do countries with government-run health care succeed in retaining high quality while "bringing costs down"? What about England? Civitas, a nonpartisan British think tank, recently scolded the British National Health Service (NHS) for "putting the patient last." Why? Civitas blames the government-run health care system's monolithic nature, lack of competition, and the burdensome and wasteful regulation, redundancy, oversight...

Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

A comedian once said that visiting Canada was like rummaging in your attic. “You go up there and say ‘Wow, there’s all this neat stuff up here! There are mountains and rivers and cities.’ ” And a parliament and a television network. It is a fact of life — whether sad or not I leave to readers — that most Americans have no strong feelings about our northern neighbor because we often forget entirely that Canada exists. Having just returned from a nine-day trip to “Beautiful British Columbia” (it’s on their license plates), I can attest that there is much...