Dakota Beacon

The American left is doing everything possible to completely change the country’s health care system to something modeled after what has been in place in a number of first world industrial nations. Why is it that no one in the national media will take the time, nor make the effort to explain how those nations experienced with statist health care are trying very hard to reverse that course?

In a great article from, possibly the best, most intellectually rigorous, website the American Thinker, this article, “The Cost of Free Government Health Care”, David Gibberman explains how life and comfort are measured by a formula:

Patients Lose the Right To Decide What Treatment They’ll Receive. Instead, patients receive whatever care politicians and bureaucratic number crunchers decide is “cost effective.”

Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence usually won’t approve a medical procedure or medicine unless its cost, divided by the number of quality-adjusted life years that it will give a patient, is no more than what it values a year of life in great health - £30,000 (about $44,820). So if you want a medical procedure that is expected to extend your life by four years but it costs $40,000 and bureaucrats decide that it will improve the quality of your life by 0.2 (death is zero, 1.0 is best possible health, and negative values can be assigned), you’re out of luck because $40,000 divided by 0.8 (4 X 0.2) is $50,000.

There Are Long Waits for Care. One way governments reduce health care costs is to require patients to wait for treatment. Patients have to wait to see a general practitioner, then wait to see a specialist, then wait for any diagnostic tests, and then wait for treatment.

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service recently congratulated itself for reducing to 18 weeks the average time that a patient has to wait from referral to a specialist to treatment. Last year, Canadians had to wait an average of 17.3 weeks from referral to a specialist to treatment (Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn). The median wait was 4.9 weeks for a CT scan, 9.7 weeks for an MRI, and 4.4 weeks for an ultrasound.

Delay in treatment is not merely an inconvenience. Think of the pain and suffering it costs patients. Or lost work time, decreased productivity, and sick pay. Worse, think of the number of deaths caused by delays in treatment.

Patients Are Denied the Latest Medical Technology and Medicines. To save money, countries with government-run health care deny or limit access to new technology and medicines. Those with a rare disease are often out of luck because medicines for their disease usually cost more than their quality-adjusted life years are deemed worth.

In a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard/Harris 2000 survey of physicians in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, physicians in all countries except the United States reported major shortages of resources important in providing quality care; only U.S. physicians did not see shortages as a significant problem. According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Health Data (2008), there are 26.5 MRIs and 33.9 CT scanners per million people in the United States compared to 6.2 MRIs and 12 CT scanners in Canada and 5.6 MRIs and 7.6 CT scanners in the United Kingdom.

Breakthroughs in Life-Saving Treatments Are Discouraged. Countries with government-run health care save money by relying on the United States to pay the research and development costs for new medical technology and medications. If we adopt the cost-control policies that have limited innovation in other countries, everyone will suffer.

The Best and Brightest Are Discouraged from Becoming Doctors. Countries with government-run health care save money by paying doctors less. According to a Commonwealth Fund analysis, U.S. doctors earn more than twice as much as doctors in Canada and Germany, more than three times as much as doctors in France, and four times as much as doctors in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The best and brightest will be encouraged to go into professions where they can earn more money and have more autonomy.

And most telling is that:

Ironically, as we’re moving toward having our government completely control health care, countries with government-run health care are moving in the opposite direction. Almost every European country has introduced market reforms to reduce health costs and increase the availability and quality of care.  The United Kingdom has proposed a pilot program giving patients money to purchase health care. Why is this being done? According to Alan Johnson, Secretary for Health, personal health budgets “will give more power to patients and drive up the quality of care” (The Guardian, 1/17/09). It’s a lesson we all should learn before considering how to improve our health care system.