The Canadian health care system is often held up by advocates of socialized medicine as a paragon of low-cost efficiency. For actual patients in need of care, however, the reality is considerably less rosy. Indeed, if one measures “efficiency” in terms of quick and easy access to services, the Canadian system is useful only as a negative role model.
According to a recent piece on CTV, for example, our illustrious neighbors to north do such a poor job of processing emergency patients that the country’s ER physicians have demanded immediate government intervention. And excessive wait times are not restricted to those needing emergency care. According to Canada’s Fraser Institute, Canadian patients routinely endure protracted wait times between initial GP referrals and actual treatment for all manner of serious maladies.
And what solutions are being offered? Precisely what one would expect from a system completely imbued with the statist mentality. Politicians and physicians alike are demanding “mandatory wait time standards.” However, as Canada’s new Prime Minister has discovered, a decree from on high is doomed to failure if no one addresses the root cause of the problem: centralized government control.
Thus, the wait time disease continues to metastasize while the bureaucrat in charge of Canadian health care brays, ‘I don’t have any magic solutions.’ Here’s an idea, Mr. Dosanjh. How about deregulation? It’s hard to see how the market can do any worse that Canada’s medicrats.
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