Thieves and Fools, Part VI

This post is the sixth installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

Today I share my own personal (admittedly far from comprehensive) experience with nationalized health care, as it is applied in Canada.

Part 1: A defense of the free market system

When I was quite young, one of my cousins was born with dramatic heart and lung defects. Any life she could have would require heroic, drastic, imaginative, amazing health care methods. It wasn't gonna be cheap.

My aunt and uncle reviewed all their options, including immigrating to Canada, where health care is "free." Quickly, they realized moving to Canada was out. Bureaucracy, quotas and federal budgets made the Canadian health care system worse than incompetent. My cousin needed the best care available in the world, and that was available only in the United States.

Eventually, my cousin received a heart- and double-lung transplant, which was performed by a surgeon living in the Los Angeles area. We were told her doctors were the best on the planet — after researching that, I believe it.

I was also told that my aunt's and uncles' credit was wrecked by the ordeal. Bake sales and raffles and an assortment of other various fundraisers helped pay for expenses, and the insurance company they subscribed to surely took a beating. And still, my aunt and uncle's credit was wrecked. But my cousin got the doctoring that she needed, and her life (and quality of life) was dramatically improved because of it. It's a real-live "only in America" story.

Part 2: An indictment of the command-structure system

Fast forward to my college days. One of my friends was talking about the virtues of the Canadian "free" health care system.

My friend described an acquaintance (we'll call him Terrance, for expedience)'s experience in Canada. Terrance was being visited by his American friend (Phillip), when Phillip caught a cold.

"Let's go to the doctor!" Terrance urged. Phillip, of course, thought Terrance was insane. A doctor, just for a cold? That'd be a profound waste of money.

But Terrance explained to Phillip: "In Canada, visits to the doctor don't cost anything! They're free, and everyone has a right to go!"

Part 3: Conclusions

Free enterprise plays a heavy role in this story. My cousin's doctors — the best in the world — received hefty fees for their work. And they worked in the United States, one of the few places on the planet where their own free enterprise was legal. Because they stood to make a ton of money, they continued to practice medicine right here.

And my aunt and uncle were willing to wreck their credit, and to ask their friends and neighbors for help, because it was for their daughter. Most of us aren't willing to go to such dramatic lengths for strangers, but we will do so for our own — that's only human nature. We pay for something what we think it's worth.

The events described in Parts 1 and 2 are entirely truthful, although some names are made up. And they seem unrelated, but one undoubtedly affects the other.

When a visit to the doctor is a "right" the doctor has an obligation to treat each patient that comes before him (regardless of the patient's ability to pay him, or of the patient's real need to see a doctor).

When Phillip caught his cold, there was nothing a doctor could do for him that a mother with a can of chicken soup couldn't. But the doctor had to spend 20 minutes of his day seeing that patient, anyway, and telling him to go eat the soup. That means someone else — someone with a real need to see a doctor, someone who stood to benefit from a doctor's expertise — had to wait, possibly for so long that, by the time the doctor arrived to see them, it was too late.

Visits to the doctor's office are not "free." They cost the doctor's fee (whoever pays it) and they cost the doctor's time. Doctors are not unlimited, and their time is not unlimited either.

When government steps in and "guarantees" that all people can go to the doctor at any time, they really only guarantee that the doctor is unavailable when we really need them.