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In response to this post, in which I mentioned how touchy “single-payer advocates are about the “S” word, I received a comment from C.M. Hughes reciting the de rigueur “progressive” talking point about socialized medicine:
The reason we don’t like equating single payer with a socialized system is because they AREN’T EQUAL! Socialized systems, like England’s, are ones in which the government owns everything … Single Payer systems, like the most succesful systems around the world, are like our Medicare and medicaid programs.
This shopworn trope ignores the real issue, of course. Regardless of what entity nominally employs the health care workers or owns the facilities, government-run health care is predicated on the notion that central bureaucratic control is somehow superior to the operation of the market.
Today’s news contains a fresh refutation of the claim that outcomes are materially different in these two types of government-run systems. In Canada’s vaunted single-payer system, expectant mothers are still finding it necessary to come to the U.S. for care:
Sarah Plank, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Ministry of Health, said a spike in high risk and premature births coupled with the lack of trained nurses prompted the surge in mothers heading across the border for better care.
And, in Great Britain’s system of socialized medicine, there is an identical shortage of adequate care:
Many neonatal units were forced to refuse new admissions for considerable periods of time … Mothers and babies may be forced to travel long distances in search of a unit with the appropriate facilities to care for them.
Hmm … These examples suggest to me that the difference between “single-payer” and “socialized” health care is mostly semantic.
Maybe Hughes and the other the advocates of government-run health care could explain how an expectant mother with no bed in Canada is happier than an expectant mother with no bed England.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Its always easy to pick examples like these, as media and types like yourselves love to find them. What I find funny is you never point out the hospitals in the U.S. who turn away patints due to lack of beds or room. Here is one example I found in 5 seconds of searching the web. And its from Standford Medical Center, a well known and respected health institution in the U.S. Why don’t you put this one in your blog???Here’s the link and a quote. http://www.stanfordpackard.org/faq.html
“Stanford Hospital had to turn away 500 adult patients who were referred to the hospital for treatment because of capacity constraints last year and 950 visitors to the Emergency Department were referred to other emergency services due to capacity issues.”
So 500 and 950, not the much lower 40 B.C. mothers that had to be transferred, due to pre-mature births. A highly specific and rare occurance that the B.C. officials even said they are correcting, as they did not see it coming since the last year and a half not ONE mother had to be transferred. And that’s all from an entire province, not just one hospital. Here’s what they had to say from the Fox story:
“I think it’s reasonable to think that this is a trend that would continue and we have to prepare for it and increase the number of beds to deal with perhaps the new reality of the number of premature babies and newborns needing a higher level of care in Canada,” Dix said.
British Columbia has added more neonatal beds and increased funding for specialized nurse training, Plank said.
“There is an identified need for some additional capacity just due to population growth and that sort of thing and that is actively being implemented,” she said.
Sounds like they are going to nip the problem in the bud before those 40 patients turn into 950 like those privately run hospitals in the States.
October 26th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Nice try, Pierre.
Maybe you should spend about 10 more seconds and find a reliable source. In the 5 seconds it took for me to look at the link you supplied, I was able to find the reason for the “500 and 950″. The facility you cite is not only being renovated, it is being torn down, rebuilt and added on to. Bedspace at Stanford Medical Center was inadequate and due to renovations, those “500″ patients were referred to other facilities in the bay area with no degredation in medical care or capacity.
I realize this may be over your head, but the uninsured in the USA get most of their primary care in Emergency Rooms. Because of that, there are occasions when EMS is diverted to another area hospital. There is a good chance that Stanford Medical Center sees more than 950 patients a day in their ER. An educated guess would tell me that less than one half of 1 percent of the total patient load of that ER would be transferred to another facility.
Since you brought up Stanford Medical Center, when was the last time a facility in your neck of the woods has been built, or a major renovation, or addition…. (or after reading a story about British NHS’ budget surplus) even some routine maintenance?
You see, Pierre, the free market allows us to make improvements in our services. The free market allows us to choose our Doctor. The free market allows our Doctor to do what is best for us. We DO NOT want to wait 3 months for an MRI or a biopsy, or a hip replacement. We pay more because of it but that is our choice. We pay more for medications so that other countries can get the same medications at cost. We pay more because our economy and the free market can handle it.
Is our system that much superior to yours? Not at all. We are looking at the opposite sides of the same coin. There is no “simple fix” to our medical funding. We spend over half of every dollar in administrative costs. 95% of that is dealing with insurances. In my warped mind, the easy thing would be to think of health insurance like car insurance. Would you use your car insurance to replace tires, get a tune up, oil chance? Then why use insurance for a simple physical, medications, minor treatments? Use cash for the simple things, use an HSA for things up to, say, $3000, then have insurance for catastrophic care.
I see only 2 major obstacles to that idea.
1. You have to rely upon YOURSELF for basic care and needs
2. Liberals want nothing spent out-of-pocket. (If it comes out of your paycheck before you get your money, its OK)
May 14th, 2008 at 2:22 am
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