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moneysense.ca, 9/06/05
Two-Tier Health-Care
Today’s Supreme Court ruling should be a wake-up call for public health-care in Canada. I am no expert on health-care, but it is easy to see that the current system is broken. I’ve never been to a physician in seven years, but a few years ago, my wife was looking for a family physician. It took us three months to find a doctor who accepted new patients. One of the plaintiffs in today’s court ruling had to wait for one year for a hip replacement surgery.
Universal, publicly funded, need-based health-care is a very noble idea. It is not entirely practical. In any case, Canadians now pay for important medical needs like pharmaceuticals and dentistry. I don’t know what the ideal solution is, but suffering in pain for months waiting for surgery is clearly unacceptable.
moneysense.ca, 9/06/05
Exactly my point in my article: Why I Oppose Nationalized Healthcare
I have heard the same sad stories from people from many countries that have decided to nationalized.
That is precisely why I am afraid every time Democrats in the USA suggest som way or another of Nationalized health care.
I want to live!
Money and Investing
Jose Anes: I am not against universal health care. I believe everyone should have access to quality healthcare. In Canada, we spend top dollar for healthcare. But, we rank very low in many health indicators (No. of MRI machines per capita etc.). So, we get to spend the money but don’t get the value for it.
Like you point out in your post, our health-care system has no incentive to do better. Why would they even try? We are getting it for “free”, right?
It appears that we in India seem to be better lot. Having no personal knowledge of the health care in Canada, I can vouch that we do not wait for years to get anytype of surgery. We have both Government Hospitals and Privately owned Hospitals ( incidentally we have one hospital whose shares are listed and public) and have options to choose. With the universal logic, that government hospitals are for poor and treatment may not be good, people go to Privately run clinic.
cvrk: There are good things to be said about the Canadian Healthcare system. Almost everyone, working or not gets access to hospitals and doctors (only a provincial health card which is available to every resident is needed). Are there problems? Yes, some pretty big ones. To me it appears that they can be fixed with some innovative solutions.