They those who forget history are destined to repeat it. Another way of saying it is that we should learn from our mistakes. The mistakes of others, also, should serve as learning opportunities shoudn’t they?
Will our leaders, particularly the Democrats now in control, learn from Canada’s errors in health care? Despite the rhetoric used by the Left that nationalized health care is a utopian realization of a sacred “right” to health care, Canada serves as a lesson that such rhetoric is folly.
Claude Castonguay, is the father of the Canadian health care system. If anyone understands it’s failings it would be him. So, what does this gentleman, who is called “the father of Quebec medicare” say about it’s success or failure?
Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”
“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”
Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.
Please take special note of the this from the article. “We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,”
Rationing services? That is a key part of the Canadian model. Let me pose this question. The Left says health care is a right. Do they also accept that rights, can be rationed? That question, more than any other is one we should pose to them.
The system has failed, and it’s own designer knows it and now supports a different approach. In fact, he sees the American syatem, the same one the Liberals tell us is in “crisis” as a far better option Warner Todd Huston has sage advice about learning from Canada’s mistake
Do situations like this exist today in the U.S. system, anyway? Yes. Can they be easily fixed. No. But the difference is, patients currently have options to be able to “fix” their own situation. Once Obamacare is forced upon us, there will BE no solutions, no “fixes” that the individual can make to help himself. We will all be forced to suffer.
…well, maybe not all. For Obama is exempting government workers and unions from the hell he is about to force upon the rest of us.
Choice! Recall that the goal of those pushing a public plan is the ELIMINATION of private insurance. And without choice in health care, what will we get? Oh Canada!