From a DrHurd.com reader who lives in Canada, where the government pays for and controls all medical care:
Dr. Hurd: If you think that socialized medicine, your doctor, hospital, pharmacy, etc. is better in Canada — think twice!
Just one week ago I had inflammation of the bladder, so I went with pain to the Emergency room and after 12 hours
was discharged home with a urine draining device attached to my bladder.
Over the following night, the prescription drug I was supposed to take was rejected by my stomach resulting in the worst-ever pain. So there was a second emergency! Then, despite my warning to the doctors that I cannot tolerate the pain killer morphine, I got it anyway because it is cheaper! Hallucinations followed and instead of being cured, I slipped into a drug overdose done by the hospital.
When my condition improved, I was moved to the hallway. It was cold, there was no privacy, and the toilet was far away. Yes, this is the socialist way of being in a CANADIAN hospital. I saw a felon from prison with two guards in a private room while I, a taxpaying citizen, was in the corridor. This is the reality of today’s socialized Medicare for all.
If people dream that something could be obtained for nothing, then think about it and ask yourself who must sacrifice or be forced by draconian taxation to pay for it.
Dr. Hurd’s reply and comments:
Readers should keep in mind that Canada is a Westernized, democratic country with a partially private economy — just like the United States. Canada is no third world country. The Canadian health care system costs a fortune, and it drains money from the private economy. To what end? Wrong prescriptions, medical malpractice and hallway hospital beds are among the costs of ‘free’ medicine.
Happy you voted for Obama and Pelosi, America?
Americans did not heed the warning of people in Canada and elsewhere. Consequently, they voted into office a socialist President and socialist Congress who gave us exactly what they promised — socialized medicine. It’s too late to stop it now, as there’s no credible political opposition to Obama’s ambitions anywhere in sight. (Mitt Romney, the governor who imposed socialized medicine on Massachusetts, running against Obama? It’s like a bad joke.)
The conditions in Canada arise from a lack of market forces in the field of medicine. Paying patients are treated no differently from felons, for example. Why not, if the goal of medicine is not to please customers?
Most Americans are turned off by the idea that doctors make money, or that hospitals operate at a profit. People subscribe to the false belief that profit and self-interest are bad, while compassion consists of selflessness. They’re vulnerable when they’re obtaining medical care, and they claim to want the compassion that comes from a lack of self-interest on the part of those providing the care.
The contradiction is truly amazing. These same fools would not advocate an airline run by Mother Teresa, or a computer designed by a social worker or community organizer. But somehow, when it comes to the vast and life-saving complexity that is modern medicine, we’re supposed to count on the alleged “compassion” and “caring” of government bureaucrats to deliver it to us.
In Canada, you’re getting exactly what political control over experts can always be expected to deliver: Rudeness, incompetence and bureaucracy. Once private ownership goes, compassion and good treatment go with it.
It’s no different with medical care than it is with anything else. Once the government takes it over, rationality is out the window. Government hospitals cannot go out of business. There are no consequences for doctors and nurses arising from the marketplace — meaning, from patients themselves. Doctors and hospitals answer to the government, and to hapless politicians in government who care about nothing except for the next election (and getting good health care themselves from an elite medical corps denied to the masses).
In a free market, those who purchase medical care will get the treatment they’re entitled to by their purchase. There’s nothing unjust about this, especially when the poorest in a free market fare better than everyone under a system of socialism. Under socialized medicine, quality does not matter because health professionals are not answering to anyone.
America has been gradually moving towards socialized medicine for decades. As government has subsidized and regulated more and more of medical care, things have become more bureaucratic and irrational than they ever would have become in a free market. Even so, you rarely hear the kinds of stories that are routine out of Canada and other nations with national health insurance. In fact, many Canadians depend upon the relative rationality of medical care in America when they’re really in a pinch and can afford an alternative to the Canadian government’s monopoly.
Now that ObamaCare has essentially sealed the deal for socialized medicine in the United States, we can expect, in coming years, to see more and more of the kinds of things Canadians describe. These horror stories will become the norm, not the exception as they are today. Eventually, nobody will remember a better time and most will assume there never was one.
When you place the “common good” above the individual good and the individual’s right and self-responsibility to care for him- or herself, you get nothing but a hideous combination of injustice, incompetence and despair. I know of no better present-day example than Canadian health care.
Unfortunately, the majority of Americans evaded what they know is the truth about Canada and voted for a socialist government to impose the same thing on us. Nobody will scream louder than these Americans who looked the other way and allowed our government to get away with all this. Yet the ones who scream the loudest about the mediocre (or worse) care to come are the ones who will most richly deserve it.