The urban myth of 'free' health care

Dr David Gratzer, a Canadian-born psychiatrist, thought his country “had the best-run health care system in the world”. He explains: “Because the system was publicly owned, I assumed that compassion came before profit and that everyone got good care.”

After entering medical school, however, Gratzer’s views shifted towards the right.

“The more I was exposed to the system,” he states, “the more familiar I became with the shortcomings of government run health care. I trained in emergency rooms that were chronically, chaotically, dangerously overcrowded, not only in my hometown of Winnipeg, but all across Canada.” Ouch.

How would you feel if your son had to wait nearly 18 weeks for surgical therapy in socialistic Canada? In some regions, pet dogs receive better care. Seriously.

The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care by Dr David Gratzer is an authoritative book for empowering human patients - and that’s a good thing in light of what’s happening in Europe. Indeed, the late, great, Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman, described The Cure as “a thorough account of what is wrong with medicine today”.

So what is wrong with America’s healthcare? Well, for one thing, it is wrongly described as a “private” system when in truth, for every dollar spent in the United States, 46 cents comes directly from government sources.

The cure? Less regulation is key. Amassing eye-opening resources of data, Gratzer shines the light on how bureaucrats work the system to feed their own bellies, and, more importantly, what communities can do to rectify the systemic problems.

Admittedly, nothing in life is free. To pretend that there is such a thing as “free health care” was always an urban myth paid for by blue collar workers in order to feed hungry white collar bureaucrats, and sold to us by greasy politicians with ulterior motives.

But what’s right about America’s health care system is also important, asserts Gratzer. On the plus side, America’s hybrid system is not as nearly as bad as Europe’s socialistic system. American cancer patients, for example, have markedly higher survival rates - and, yes, an American woman, with first-stage breast cancer is more likely to survive than a British woman.

Encouragingly, America’s imperfect but healthier system can do better. In other words, libertarians will be happy to know that, according to the World Health Organization (PDF 756KB), the United States consistently beats Europe in the war against cancer (“For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 per cent; the European rate 35 per cent”), but there’s room to grow. What if, for example, capitalism could lift survival rates even higher?

Of course, there is always room to grow. Forget the bureaucrats: Washington’s partly socialised system, after all, is holding America back - and why have a good system when you can have a great system? HillaryCare is soooo yesterday.

Other questions we could ask, prompted by the WHO’s findings, are:

• if socialism is so compassionate, then why are so many older Europeans, with mental health issues receiving inferior medications? (“Professor Schoffski finds that only one-third of German patients who are treated for depression get Prozac or the other new meds; the majority are treated with the best pharmacology that the 1970s had to offer” - page 181);
• if socialism is so successful, then why are more Europeans now acknowledging that socialism is failing? (“Finland,” for instance, “sees privatization and contracting out as a major tool in the reform of public services” - page 178); and
• if socialism is so life affirming, then what led the West’s most liberal high court to out their Kremlin-style policies? (“On June 9, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada called the healthcare system dangerous and deadly, striking down key laws and turning the country’s vaunted medicare on its head” - 178).

Gratzer convincingly argues that paternalistic over regulation, not sensible deregulation, lies at the heart - no pun intended - of the problems of Canada’s dying system.

In Vancouver Island, for example, 600,000 people had to share one MRI machine. And, to add insult to serious injury, that lonely machine could operate only on bankers’ hours. Is it any wonder why British Columbian physicians launch public protests?

“Therein lies the dirty truth of Canadian health care,” states Gratzer. “It is just like the old Soviet system” everything is free, but nothing is readily available.

Still, the fierce academic war on whether or not capitalism or socialism is far from over. Yes, America’s cancer rates are relatively good - but they will have to swallow a larger dose of capitalism in order to increase their lead.

To be fair, Europeans and Canadians are slowly waking up. Socialism, after all, is a faith system with a bad track record. One can believe in big brother as much as you like - but that doesn’t help increase breast cancer survival rates. Seriously.