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Strawberries and cream

Every country has its little quirks that makes it special, and this also goes for surrealism and socialism. I remember how surprised I was to learn that in Canada's health care system, private health care is illegal in the sense that paying money to get treatment faster is a crime. This means that if you are sick, you have to wait in line for your turn in the government-paid care, and you are not allowed pay more to go to a private doctor because that wouldn't be equal. Even if you just can't wait for your turn any longer because you are freaking going to die, your only alternative to becoming a criminal is to cross the border to get medical care. I don't think there are many other countries in the Free World with a health care system as depraved as this. At least I can't name one.

Private medical services do exist, but they have to follow the government system and thus can't discriminate on price. And what a surprise, there are long waiting times and shortages of doctors, so that families have to hold on to a family doctor with a zeal that rivals a way a Manhattanite holds on to his rent-controlled apartment. When the price of something is legislatively forced below its real market price, the buyers always have to pay the difference some other way, and all reasons why this is so also apply to health care.

Fortunately, it seems that these laws are not enforced that strongly. Such socialism is absolutely surreal in an otherwise free and liberal country, and cannot possibly last much longer. There are already challenges to it to create a two-tiered system with private insurance and private clinics, and I recall recently reading in the news that some American health care company is going to open a clinic in Toronto that operates on such free-market principles. Please do so, because up here we are waiting for our liberators with flowers and kisses.

9 comments

And yet ... even though Canadians have to wait to get health care services, and don't always have access to the leading technology, the streets of Canadian cities are not littered with the rotting corpses of people who've died for want of health care. In fact those danged Canadians actually are living longer than us Americans even though we spend far far more on health care.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

It isn't so weird. In a Canadian way the health care stays more like "our issue". It means health care for all, and not only for those who have succeeded in robbing legally the shared resources.

It isn't so weird. In a Canadian way the health care stays more like "our issue". It means health care for all, and not only for those who have succeeded in robbing legally the shared resources.

Why not generalize this brilliant idea? What's wrong with organizing the entire economy according to the Canadian health care way? Hmmm ... didn't they just try that somewhere?

Markku, perhaps you just got the idea why not to organize the whole society in that way.

"I don't think there are many other countries in the Free World with a health care system as depraved as this. At least I can't name one."

There isn't one. Canada is unique in that respect. At least that's what all the articles describing the Canadian system always say.

I don't think there are many other countries in the Free World with a health care system as depraved as this.

"If you believe there is a problem, it is your responsibility to fix it"

Mikko,

why do you think a mixed system such as ours in Finland is any worse than the completely socialistic system in Canada other than that the Canadian system is more equal? (That it is more equal does not imply that it is better for anyone.)

"If you believe there is a problem, it is your responsibility to fix it"

Indeed, but here I trust that the cruel logic of market will eventually fix this problem by itself.

At some point, it just won't be feasible to search and prosecute doctors and their patients who bypass the official system, any more than it was possible to maintain the Berlin Wall.

"why do you think a mixed system such as ours in Finland is any worse than the completely socialistic system in Canada other than that the Canadian system is more equal?"

It can perhaps rise the median health care utility and give a far better utility for those under the burden of lower income.

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