Health Care BS

Americans who think we need a health care system similar to that of Canada should read this piece by Nadeem Esmail. If you like long wait times coupled with ineffective government mandates, you’ll love the system endured by our neighbors to the north. Here’s the crucial passage:

What is being quickly forgotten in Canada is that any wait for care involves pain and suffering, lost productivity at work and leisure, mental anguish, and additional strain on personal relationships.

Canada’s wait times, as it happens, are even longer than other countries with various forms of socialized medicine, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. How is Canada dealing this problem? Mandatory wait time guarantees.

But that classic bureaucratic strategy ignores the underlying problem: demand is outstripping supply. No arbitrary decree from any government can render market forces neutral. So, as Esmail puts it:

Even if the wait time guarantees are achieved, Canada’s health care system will still continue to fail patients.

In other words, Canada’s system is “stuck on the premise that Canadians must wait for care,” which means that their wait time mandates amount to guaranteed suffering.