Canadians Still Come To The US For Health Care That Matters

When the Premier of a Canadian Province leaves his country for the US for heart care, that tells me about all I need to know about the relative differences between socialized health care and private care. Basic facts, from the CBC:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams will be sidelined from three to 12 weeks because of heart surgery he'll undergo at an undisclosed location in the United States, acting premier Kathy Dunderdale says.

Telling details:

"Having the surgery done in the province was never an option that was offered to him," Dunderdale said.

"Ultimately, we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health, and he has taken medical advice from a number of different sources," she said. "Based on all of the medical advice that he's received, he is doing what is best for him, to do everything he can to ensure that he can have the best outcome from the surgery and that he can be back on his feet and back here doing his job as quickly as possible."

Never an option. Doing what's best for him. Well, so great that the Canadians in high places can leave their country to get adequate care. What about the rest of the country? The little people?

More! How about the claims that innovation will be stifled in the US if we have socialized care. That's BS, right?

Kaminski said people shouldn't view his decision to seek medical help elsewhere as a condemnation of Canada's medical health system.

"It could be something as simple as a slightly new technique that's being tried that gives a speedy recovery and that's not yet approved in Canada," she said.

Kaminski said it might also be a procedure that can't be performed for whatever reason by medical professionals in the province.

People vote with their feet. That's where the results are shown. One could say, "Oh, the Premier left Newfoundland, which is a pretty remote Province". True, but he didn't go to Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, or Vancouver, either. He went to the USA.

We're stupid if we want this here.

Williams is not the first Canadian politician to go to the US for treatment. CBC has a clip showing more:http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/player.html?clipid=1403201839

We Want To Give Power?

Why am I so opposed to government run health care? Because I'm hard pressed to think of anything important that government does well. For reference, consider our economy.

Yes, the Federal Reserve is a private bank, but it is given power to control our currency by our federal government. Ben Bernanke is the 'Czar' of the Fed. He was wrong about housing, wrong about the poosibility of recession, wrong about the strength of economic fundamentals.



Video courtesy Lew Rockwell. Great article.

This is typical. 'Stimulus' packages don't work, so our federal government does stimulus packages. Inept people run the show. Socialized medicine doesn't work, so of course we are headed that way, and no doubt, some inept clown with be the 'Czar' of health care.

If I had a surgery I was putting off, I'd get it done pronto.

(h/t: Wayne Kirk)

When Do We Call It 'Socialism'?

One of my favorite things to observe in the jubilant Left these days is an unwillingness to embrace the possibility that the first 100 days of Democratic rule might be socialism.

I think The Left knows well enough that socialism is not going to be broadly embraced, but I think it also knows that given bits and pieces of socialistic policy here and there, especially if dressed up with different words, like 'benefit', can make for broad enough an embrace.

My greatest fear is that we will be treated to socialized medicine in the first 100 days. If I learned anything from Mitch Daniels' first term, or Bill Clinton's, it's that you do the controversial things very early, and then you spend the next three years doing innocuous things. Well, it also helped that in both of these cases, the response to their first year was that they lost their parties' legislative majorities and returned to divided government.

When I mention this to my Obama-supporting friends, I get a heap of resistence, pooh-poohing the idea that there are any socialistic intents, just an improvement of benefits, or increasing access, or something, anything besides socialism.

I'd like to see how some of you would define socialized medicine.

Here's a definition I consider useful, from the Cato Institute, in a recent publication:

Socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs. Notice that under this definition, it is irrelevant whether we describe medical resources (e.g.,hospitals, employees) as “public” or “private.” What matters—what determines real as opposed to nominal ownership—is who controls the resources. By that definition, America’s health sector is already more than half socialized, and Obama’s health care plan would socialize medicine even further.

There is one main reason I oppose socialized health care. I believe it inherently unjust to involuntarily cause one person pay for any good or service consumed by another person.

I've always been mystified by The Left's gigantic blind spot, willfully or otherwise, on this point. How can one oppose involuntary servitude, or involuntary conscription into the military, and yet accept involuntary responsibility for the cost of another's health care? In any of these cases, an individual is denied the full decision of the allocation of his resources. They are taken by the state, against the will of the individual, and given elsewhere, on the basis that the state has first claim, and knows best besides.

Where Will We Defend Freedom?

(Fishers, IN)- If either John McCain or Barack Obama came out tomorrow and said that he had a plan that would eliminate about half of the newspapers in this country, and furthermore tell you which ones you could read, would you get behind that plan, or would you fight it? Would you say that there was a free market for newspapers in such a scenario? Or freedom of the press?

The Cato Institute's Michael Cannon so describes the Obama health care plan:

"He would let the Federal government dictate the content and the price of every private insurance plan in the United States."

and

"Imagine Barack Obama as President propose that he was going to have the government dictate the content of every news program in the United States, and eliminate half of the existing programs and newspapers that are out there. Would
you call that a government-dominated system? You certainly wouldn't call it a free press. And that's largely what Barack Obama wants to do with health care."

So says Tanner in the October 7, 2008 Cato Daily Podcast.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is both wilfull ignorance and deceptive talk among the backers of 'health care for all'. They tend to bristle at the word 'socialism', or the phrase 'socialized health care'. Well, what else would it be, then?

Oh! I know! Another drain on our ailing economy.

One Doctor's Insights

In my summer hockey session, there are fewer players, so the teams are all jumbled. All four of my linemates are guys I've never played with before. So, I try to get to know them a bit. After the game (a 6-1 win, and a goal by Yours Truly), I spoke with Dan, who is a family practice physician. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

As we were talking generally, he asked me my opinion of the state of health care. My response was simple: Insurance is the problem. It is a middleman taking a share of the cost without adding value, and it makes decisions where doctors should make them instead. I didn't say that I believe in the free market, that socialized health care is unjust, or anything political.

He thought this critique on the role of insurance was right on the mark. Among the loads of tidbits he threw at me, I hung on to these:

Medicare will be insolvent in three years.

Congress knows this, or should, and is passing this political football to the poor sap who is elected President.

The system will collapse because of insurance. It will be overhauled with Medical Savings Accounts, making people notice price for the first time in two generations.

The US devotes 19% of GDP to health care. Economists believe that any economy that devotes 23% of GDP to health care is unsustainable.

These are just one doctor's opinions, and I can't vouch for the precision of the numbers. But, being that these are largely things I had never heard before, or certainly don't hear very often, I found them exceptionally jarring and enlightening.

I found it most insightful that he told me he is glad the race is Obama & McCain, since both of them appear to him to be the kind of people who will shake things up- because the thing that needs to be said is this: "You know how we've been telling you that health care is a right? Yeah, we've been leading you by the nose on that one. It's a load of crap."

I agree with his assessment of the need to come clean, but I really don't think those Obama or McCain are the ones that would do it at all. Both of those appear to be the kind of captains that would be damn glad to go down with their ships- McCain, Iraq; Obama, who talks of expanding socialized health care. I let it go for now about Bob Barr, as there will be opportunity a-plenty.

He then went on about the lousy choices Americans make with regards to food, drink, exercise, and to a lesser degree, smoking; and the resulting Type 2 diabetes he sees regularly in people under 30. His conclusion- you can't have people be completely free of the responsibility to pay for their own choices and have people take on the burden of other people's choices. Economic collapse is the only possible result.

I think I'll have little trouble turning him on to Barr. I sincerely doubt the American people are ready for this news, in the face of all the other bad news raining on us these days.

Health Care Preview

Quoth Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Seems like us free marketeers are on the unpopular side of the health care numbers, so it won't surprise me when the day comes that American doctors inspect us like cattle, and if our wastelines are greater than the prescribed measurement, we will be declared officially overweight, and subject to fines.

Dystopian libertarian scare tactic? No- it's what happens in Japan today. Link to CNN video.

When everybody is responsible for the cost of everybody else's health care, you can bet we'll all be interested in the size of your waist.

I'll laugh my ass off, because I'm trim enough not to worry, and so many of those who thought socialized health care was a great idea will be off to the fat farm, miserable in having to actually exercise. Good. I'd be happier left alone, and fending for myself on my family's health care bills, but I don't think I'm going to have that chance for much longer, so I may as well take pleasure where I still can. If I have to pay for you, I'll be the biggest health nanny this planet has ever seen, harassing fat people in the street, merely as a cost prevention measure.

Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it. Hard. As you deserve.