I found this comment under a brilliant Fisking of a New York Times non-story about government giveaways:
Most Americans don't see where this is going. Here in Canada we have universal health care, which is just another way of saying that you're forbidden to use a private doctor.
After a decade or two, society loses all memory of private care and starts to see the govt as the only source of comfort. The choices in elections come down between more spending on govt health care and a lot more.
Usually it's a lot more because Canadians are waiting several months to see specialists, wait over a year for surgeries and are sometimes lucky to have a GP.
But we don't remember what private health care can do, and besides, the care is free at point of use, so most Canadians think it's just free, even as health care costs are rising just as fast as in the US and health spending now eats up half of our provincial budgets. (Ontario, our biggest province btw, has a per capita deficit and debt larger than California's).
So big govt is now like cancer of the brain stem. It's attached at the cellular level can cannot be removed. It can only grow and that unrestrained growth will eventually kill us. But that's okay, because there are no other choices.
The chart of Canadian Waiting Room Times came from here. (I love this guy, BTW. The tagline to his blog is "Think Globally, Act Locally, Demand Handouts.") Here's the video that always comes to mind when the issue of total dependency arises.
Most Americans don't see where this is going. Here in Canada we have universal health care, which is just another way of saying that you're forbidden to use a private doctor.
After a decade or two, society loses all memory of private care and starts to see the govt as the only source of comfort. The choices in elections come down between more spending on govt health care and a lot more.
Usually it's a lot more because Canadians are waiting several months to see specialists, wait over a year for surgeries and are sometimes lucky to have a GP.
But we don't remember what private health care can do, and besides, the care is free at point of use, so most Canadians think it's just free, even as health care costs are rising just as fast as in the US and health spending now eats up half of our provincial budgets. (Ontario, our biggest province btw, has a per capita deficit and debt larger than California's).
So big govt is now like cancer of the brain stem. It's attached at the cellular level can cannot be removed. It can only grow and that unrestrained growth will eventually kill us. But that's okay, because there are no other choices.
The chart of Canadian Waiting Room Times came from here. (I love this guy, BTW. The tagline to his blog is "Think Globally, Act Locally, Demand Handouts.") Here's the video that always comes to mind when the issue of total dependency arises.
2 comments:
I don't have figures to hand, but I wouldn't like to bet that British waiting times are any lower, either.
And this is Ontario, I have read that they have a lot more trouble finding doctors to live/work in rural areas (the US does as well) so I can only imagine what those statistics would look like.
Post a Comment