Universal Health Problems.

Via Karol at Alarming News and James Taranto's 'Best of the Web', we have an AP story in The Guardian discussing problems in Canada's universal health system.

Canada's Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Quebec law that banned private insurance for services covered under Medicare, a landmark decision that could affect the country's universal health-care system.

The justices took a year to rule on a case that began in 1997, when George Zeliotis, an elderly Montreal man, tried to pay for hip replacement surgery rather than wait nearly a year for treatment at a public hospital.

Zeliotis told the high court that he suffered pain and became addicted to painkillers during the yearlong wait for surgery, and he should have been allowed to pay for faster service with private insurance.

The Canadian system is one that the single (government) payor universal healthcare zealots point to when they push for that solution here in America.  Now here's a Canadian court ruling that restraint of free contracting between an individual and a service provider is illegal.  I suspect in our free-market economy you'd find judges ruling similarly.

Opponents of changes to Medicare claimed it could force Canada into a two-tiered health care system in which those who have deeper pockets get faster, better service from doctors who opt out of the public health-care program.

I've got news for those Canadian opponents of this decision.  It already is at least a two or three tier system.  Patients flock across the border to the States to speed up their treatment.  And I'm fairly certain that there are "privileged" individuals, high-ranking government officials, for instance, who would not have to wait in the queue.

But the universal health-care system - while considered one of the fairest in the world - has been plagued by long waiting lists and a lack of doctors, nurses and new equipment. Some patients wait years for surgery, MRI machines are scarce and many Canadians travel to the United States for medical treatment.

In most Canadian provinces, it is illegal to seek faster treatment and jump to the head of the line by paying out of pocket for public care. Private health clinics have sprouted up even though they are technically illegal, though the provincial governments tend to look the other way...

Most polls indicate Canadians support Medicare, despite the high taxes needed to fund the service, seeing it as a marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States, where some 45 million Americans lack health insurance.

So, for the joy of claiming that they have a universal health system that treats everyone equally, Canadians get 1) long waits for elective procedures, 2) scarce technology, 3) fewer physicians and nurses, 4) residents leaving the country to get their care in the US, 5) really high taxes and 6) a not really equal system, with some more equal than others.  Americans, on the other hand, have 1) the best technology in even remote areas, 2) people flocking here for their care, 3) lower taxes, 4) enough physicians, though they could be distributed better, 5) virtually no waiting lines and 6) a not really equal system.  True, we have 45 million without insurance.   Those without insurance are not without health care, however.  They have options, including paying for their care out of pocket and applying for "free care" (subsidized by the state in Massachusetts) in most hospitals, and can always get emergency care.

The 45 million without insurance have been made to believe that they are entitled to have all of their care paid, with no expense to them.  In fact, those who push for 'universal health care' would like to have the recipient of the care not made at all aware of the cost of the services provided.  When people are given things for free they sometimes see what they receive as worthless.

We read a few days ago about David Asman's encounter with the British system, where old equipment, high hospital infection rates and delays in the public system exist.  Now here's Canada's story.  Tell me again why we want similar universal health care here?

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt weighs in on the topic.

This is of course exactly the result that follows adoption of Hillary-care or any of the other collectivist schemes that surface every couple of years from the left side of the American political spectrum.  Rationing is rationing, and it results in the lines and pains and death that Canada presently enjoys.

This decision is huge for the health care debate in America. In effect, single payor has been tried on a vast scale and found to be a failure in a country that no one can describe as other than liberal and committed to the success of the effort.

Well put.

Submitted to Wizbang's COTT XV.