Affordable health care

July 31, 2012

Free Market Foundation

If socialised medicine is so great, asks economist Walter Williams, why do Canadian and British physicians send patients to the United States, and why does the Canadian government spend over $1 billion each year on health care in the US?

According to the Cato Institute, U.S. hospitals and clinics treat thousands of foreign patients. The Mayo Clinic treats more than 7,000 foreigners a year, the Cleveland Clinic 5,000; Johns Hopkins Hospital 6,000, and 1 out of 3 Canadian physicians send a patient to the U.S. for treatment each year. Why? Because the delay in health care services is not only inconvenient, it’s deadly:

The Fraser Institute found that Canada’s median waiting times from a patient’s referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, depending on the procedure, averages from 5 to 40 weeks; the wait for diagnostics, such as MRI or CT, ranges between 4 and 28 weeks.

In England, 750,000 are awaiting hospital admission, and the National Health Services hopes to achieve an 18-week maximum wait from general practitioner to treatment, including all diagnostic tests, by the end of 2008.

In both countries, many patients with diseases that are curable at the time of diagnosis become incurable by the time of treatment or patients become too weak for the surgical procedure.

It is true that the U.S. has health care problems, but it is not because theirs is a free market system. Nearly 50 per cent of all health expenditures are made by the government, and where government spends, it regulates. However, if socialised medicine becomes a reality, Americans can do as many Brits do, join in medical tourism, says Williams. More than 70,000 Britons have gone as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations.

Source: Walter E. Williams, Affordable Health Care, Townhall, October 22, 2008; Michael Walker, Nadeem Esmail and Maureen Hazel, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada, Fraser Institute, October 7, 2008; Michael Tanner, The Grass Is Not Always Greener, Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 613, March 18, 2008.

For text: http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/10/22/affordable_health_care

For Fraser text: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/6240.aspx

For Cato text: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9272

For more on Health Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16

FMF Policy Bulletin/ 04 November 2008