FROM NCPA
HEAD: LONG WAITS FOR HEALTH CARE ARE COSTING CANADIANS BILLIONS
Excessive waits for health care services endured by Canadian patients have
imposed huge costs on the nation's citizens according to a study from the
Centre for Spatial Economics.
Other major findings:
The study of medical wait times in all 10 of Canada's provinces found
excessive delays for four key procedures--total joint replacement surgery,
cataract surgery, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) scans--cost the nation an estimated $14.8 billion
in
2007.
This in turn lowered federal and provincial government revenues by a total
of $4.4 billion, the re****t noted.
However, it is individuals who bear these costs. When the government
controls all of health care, it looks for ways to save money, and the
easiest way to save is to deny care or ration care through long waits,
says
Charles M. Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public
Policy.
Rationing care by using waiting lists puts a heavy strain on an economy by
incurring high costs through reduced worker productivity, says Devon
Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Canadian Medicare uses rationing by waiting because the cost of lost
productivity is borne by the individual and employer, whereas the cost of
actually providing needed care falls on the public system.
For example:
Excessive waiting for total joint replacement surgery was the most
expensive
byproduct of Canada's health care rationing, at nearly $26,400 per
patient.
That was followed closely by MRIs ($20,000), coronary artery bypass graft
surgery ($19,400), and cataract surgery ($2,900).
Herrick disagrees with the study's policy prescription, saying private
care
options would be more effective than increased government investment in
the
system.
"Canadians should be allowed to pay for care privately if they so choose.
It is unconscionable to forbid patients from paying for care the public
system cannot provide them in a timely manner," he says.
Source: Sanjit Bagchi, "Long Waits for Health Care Are Costing Canadians
Billions of Dollars," Health Care News, June 1, 2008.
*********
"Unconscionable," a wonderful one word description for socialist medicine,
and the bozos want to do it here! The free market, capitalism, and
competition are the only solutions everywhere.
Dionysus
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