Subsidize demand. Restrict supply.

If you want something for “free,” make sure the government isn’t the payor. It’s a classic moral hazard.

In the case of any shortfall of the “free” good or service, the government will appeal to the people they saddled with the costs. AKA taxpayers. It’s the taxpayers fault for not paying enough. Or, it’s the taxpayers who are being hurt (by our policies) and must have relief!

Raising taxes is one solution. Reducing services is another. Doing both is optimal for your government. And when the drain on the Treasury can be reduced by eliminating customers… well health care isn’t where you want that to happen.

Those of you who think corporations are dispassionate have never considered the heights of dispassion available to the organization that controls the currency and monopolizes the ‘legal’ use of deadly force. Which may come from a gun or a syringe.

Canada’s Euthanasia Policies Under Scrutiny As Reports Surface Of Euthanizing A Man For “Hearing Loss”

“Free” health care

Canada continues its long running demonstration that health care is not the same as health insurance. That ceding control of your health care based on promises from government health ‘insurers’ is a sucker’s move.

It’s been awhile since I mentioned Canada’s health ‘care’ system as a cautionary tale, but with the US Democrat hegemony piling more money into Obamacare with the Inflation Resurgence Reduction Act, you might be interested in what awaits us if the Dem’s universal health care dreams continue.

July 22nd, 2022
As Canada’s health system burns, Trudeau and the provinces debate the firehose
A public health-care system that was already straining before the pandemic is now visibly coming apart.

Aug 9, 2022
Healthcare costs for average Canadian family to hit $16,000 this year

A typical Canadian family of four will pay about $15,847 for public healthcare insurance this year, according to a study done by the Fraser Institute.

“Canadians pay a substantial amount of money for healthcare through a variety of taxes, even if we don’t pay directly for medical services,” said Fraser Institute director of health policy studies and study co-author Bacchus Barua in a Tuesday statement.

GOLDSTEIN: Canadian medicare — high costs, long waits, mediocre outcomes

Long before the pandemic hit, the myth of “free” Canadian health care gave us one of the most expensive health-care systems, with some of the longest medical wait times in the developed world, with mediocre outcomes judged by international standards.

Speaking of pandemic: Canada maintains the most draconian conglomeration of CCP virus mandates anywhere outside of China or North Korea. You can look it up. The government can do this because they can say your health insurance doesn’t apply to your health care if you don’t do what you are told.

Some looking it up examples: Make sure you find some info about Tamara Lich.

Artur Pawlowski is another example of free speech suppression. The Powlowski charges have been overturned.

Tamara Lich is still a political prisoner.

Single-nayer

What We Call National Health Care or Single-Payer Is a Crime Against Humanity

Wait times are rationing. The payer just says “nay” to timely treatment. The Other Club has been writing about wait times in Canada’s single-payer medical system since 2005. Click the tag below.

Elizabeth Warren’s plan would be worse than Canada’s.
The math for Warren’s health-care plan adds up if you accept its ludicrous premise

Medicare for all

The Road to Venezuela.
NHS ‘rationing leaves patients in pain’

Britain implemented the health care policy being urged upon us by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in 1948.

Stein’s Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Health Insurance and Health Care are not the same thing

Most recent data from Canada, where there is universal health insurance: Waiting Your Turn – Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2017 Report

Waiting for treatment has become a defining characteristic of Canadian health care. In order to document the lengthy queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures in the country, the Fraser Institute has — for over two decades — surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces.

This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 20.0 weeks reported in 2016. This year’s wait time—the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history — is 128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.

Unsurprisingly, when supply of a good is bureaucratically rationed, shortages result. When the good is “free,” it’s worse.

Somebody should tell Nancy and Bernie.

Canada Health care retrospective

The Other Club has written extensively about health care in Canada (see below). So much in fact, that the story earlier this month about Newfoundland Premier (Governor) Danny Williams coming to the United States for heart surgery seemed like same old, same old.

The comparable story, from a US perspective, might be that the Governor of Mississippi went to India for heart surgery.

Premier Williams came here for a heart operation he could not get in Newfoundland. We don’t know if he could have had the operation somewhere else in Canada. Probably he could, but we do know he chose not to.

In any case, he’s been attacked in Canada for this choice. You can see where it might be embarrassing to a culture heavily dependent upon their health care system for a sense of moral superiority.

Williams’ defense? “I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.” It’s “my heart, my choice and my health.” Hear, hear.

This seems to be a story worth noting as President Obama unveils his new plan to destroy Premier Williams’ future health care choices. Without the US, where would he have gone?

IAC, thanks to Jason Gillman for pointing this press release out at Americans for Limited Government.

Following are most of the posts from TOC on the topic of Canadian health care, which has been held up to us as a goal. I put them together because TOC has always contended we can learn something from Canada, and most of these posts depend upon Canadian sources.

Monday, April 04, 2005
Canadian Health Care. You’ll Get Old Just Waiting.

Thursday, June 16, 2005
45 Million Myths

Thursday, June 30, 2005
Medicine Cabinet Minister

Monday, July 11, 2005
Brave New World meets Animal Farm

Thursday, July 14, 2005
You don’t always get what you pay for

Thursday, August 11, 2005
Canada: 3 Examples, 1 Point

Monday, August 15, 2005
Pollyanna Preposterous?

Thursday, August 18, 2005
Ob-Gyns with 10 Month Waiting Lists

Saturday, April 22, 2006
Universal Health Care Update

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The cost of free health care

Friday, May 05, 2006
Free health care

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Socialist health care

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Previewing Hillarycare

Friday, December 15, 2006
Socialized health care choices

Saturday, December 23, 2006
Lessons from Canada

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
…every other advanced country

Thursday, March 15, 2007
Waiting for Trudot

Thursday, August 09, 2007
SCHIP of Fools

Sunday, August 19, 2007
Human gestation period surprises Canadian health administrators

Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Support the system. Game the system. It’s all OK, eh?

Monday, January 21, 2008
Andragogy Canada

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Obama; Needs time in Canadian Instructional League?

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Canada is telling us something

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Health care lotteries, a Canadian growth industry

Monday, August 25, 2008
Universal health care

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Safety valve endangered

Thursday, June 04, 2009
Lessons from Canada???

Monday, June 22, 2009
Canada: health care rationing review

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Canada: health care wait times

Sunday, June 28, 2009
Health care notes

Sunday, July 12, 2009
Canadians criticize Canadian health care wait times

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Canadian analysis

Monday, August 03, 2009
Canadian counterpoint

“…intractable Canadian health-care problems”

Thursday, August 20, 2009
Message from the President of the Canadian Medical Association

Friday, August 21, 2009
Surgery panels

Friday, September 04, 2009
Reimbursement panels panel

Saturday, September 26, 2009
The View from Dromore

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Anecdotes

Friday, October 30, 2009
Canada Health Care – Recent News. And some from here, too.

Canada Health Care – Recent News. And some from here, too.

Except for 1 nod to The Wall Street Journal, please note that all sources are Canadian.

Canadians face 16-week wait for surgery: Report
Calgary Herald
October 29, 2009

Canadians looking to undergo surgery can expect to wait an average of 113 days in 2009, a slight improvement over last year, a national health-care survey has found.

The Fraser Institute’s annual report on hospital wait times found that the median wait-time for Canadians seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment is 16.1 weeks in 2009, down from 2008’s 17.3 weeks.

…”In spite of large increases in health spending, Canadians are waiting 73 per cent longer for surgery than they did in 1993,” said Nadeem Esmail, author of the report and a director with the right-wing think-tank.

Province Wants to Sell Surgeries to Saskatchewan
TheTyee.ca
October 29, 2009

People from Saskatchewan may soon be coming to British Columbia for surgery, if negotiations between the two provincial governments are successful.

B.C.’s health minister, Kevin Falcon, said selling surgeries will bring money into B.C.’s system and help British Columbians get care sooner. But New Democratic Party health critic, Adrian Dix, said the plan makes no sense when health authorities are already cancelling surgeries for British Columbians.

…The move comes while health authorities are cutting the number of surgeries they provide, said NDP critic Dix.

The Fraser Health Authority has said it will cut as many as 9,900 surgeries because of budget constraints and the Interior Health Authority has cut 428 orthopaedic surgeries before the end of the fiscal year, he said.

Across the province, there are 15,000 people waiting for orthopaedic surgery, Dix said. The figure is confirmed on the province’s waitlist website.

“They cancel 10,000 surgeries for us and they offer up those surgeries to people in Saskatchewan,” said Dix. “When you offer up spaces to people from other provinces, then those are spaces that could and should be taken by the people who paid for those hospitals, paid for those operating rooms, paid for that capacity, and that’s the people of British Columbia.”

Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough
smalldeadanimals.com
October 29, 2009

There are 1,100 vaccination clinics open in Alberta today.

Manitoba opened to the general public yesterday. Pharmacists can give the vaccine.

And in Saskatchewan?

Nope. Allowing anyone even a sniff of vaccine outside of the Official Health Care System would be “two-tier” health care. So if you want a vaccination for H1N1, you have another two week wait before the vaccine is “released” to the general public. And in Saskatoon, they’re going to have everyone – which will include many who are incubating and infectious – congregate at a single site Prairieland Park) to receive it.

Declining Standards of Canadian Health Care
Canada Updates
October 25, 2009

Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment.

But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

Can there be the slightest doubt that government subsidy brings government control? If you are wavering on that question, you should read what the US government does with car companies, where, unlike health care, it said it does not want to be in the car business.

Politicians Butt In at Bailed-Out GM
The Wall Street Journal
October 30, 2009

Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg was no fan of the $58 billion federal rescue of General Motors Co., saying he worried taxpayer money would be wasted and the restructuring process would be vulnerable to “political pressure.” Now the lawmaker says it’s his “patriotic duty” to wade into GM’s affairs.

…Probably no company has been more on the receiving end of congressional attention than GM, whose widely scattered factories, suppliers and dealership network put it in touch with nearly every U.S. congressional district.

Ask yourself 2 questions.

  1. Given how the US government has maneuvered Medicare into bankruptcy, and given how the US government is currently handling the automobile manufacturing business: If you could, would you switch your health care services to Medicare just before $500 million dollars are cut from it?
  2. Will Congress accept exactly the same health care entitlements they want to force on us?

If you answered either of those questions “Yes,” you need medical attention immediately.

One indication of the level of nanny state control we’ve been paying our national legislators to develop for most of the year: The 1,990 page bill (H.R. 3962) will require nutritional labels on food dispensed from vending machines. Since you probably cannot see what’s printed, in 4 point type, on the package inside that vending machine:

In the case of an article of food sold from a vending machine that—

(I) does not permit a prospective purchaser to examine the Nutrition Facts Panel before purchasing the article or does not otherwise provide visible nutrition information at the point of purchase; and

(II) is operated by a person who is engaged in the business of owning or operating 20 or more vending machines, the vending machine operator shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button that includes a clear and conspicuous statement disclosing the number of calories …

This is what Congress thinks of as health care reform. The number of calories for vending machine snacks have to be displayed, so before you select “Deep-fried Twinkies” or “Unsalted Chocolate-covered Bacon/Cheese Sausage/Reject Bits,” you’ll be able to compare caloric content.

Let me suggest that the only people interested in this information are people who would prefer to starve to death rather than eat from a vending machine. Well, they are also interested in what you eat from a vending machine, but isn’t that the whole point? All in all, though, this is small stuff. A half… no, a quarter-measure.

Consider that minor adaptations to vending machines would allow detecting your weight and height. Certain combinations of weight and height could be refused service for certain snacks. If you persist despite a recorded warning, you don’t get a snack and you don’t get a refund, that’s a “trying to game the system” fine.

A blood pressure cuff and blood sugar testing device could be installed in the snack delivery opening, and if you fail to meet a government determined ratio of these numbers you can’t pull your arm out until you drop the snack. You don’t get a refund, and the snack is donated to People for the Ethical Treatment of People for third world disposal. That’s a healthy living tax.

Finally, while we’re talking about whether your body is your property, can we at least recognize the threat posed to the pregnancy termination advocacy industry?

It was something that got into your body that caused that medical condition, wasn’t it? How it got in there can effect very different outcomes. To ensure choice at the earliest stages, and to avoid the necessity of FCC monitored wireless personal-implant electronic devices, the caloric content of a unit dose of semen alongside a warning of the risks of pregnancy must be tattooed on all male, um… biologic delivery systems.

We can probably persuade condom manufacturers to subsidize the tattooing. It’s a natural advertising opportunity for male enhancement.