Extra! Extra! Canadians figure out socialized medicine doesn’t work!
Oh how the liberals love to point to Canada’s socialized healthcare system as being the North Star for us to navigate by. Canada’s system has big problems, though, ones which are easy to see and predict, yet hastily ignored by those looking to feed the Hutt of federal government. However, it’s hard to ignore the fact that one of the founders of Canada’s socialized medical system has now admitted that their system has failed and 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.
In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It’s as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.
What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.
Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.
No competition and inefficient government bureaucracy does not a better system make.
Excellent article on the realities of socialized medicine.
What the Manhattan Institute’s writer omits is that Castonguay has not recommended dismantling of Quebec’s Medicare system, or that the poor should now be left without medical insurance as many are in the US. He recommends several reforms, including some market-based reforms, to strengthen – not dismantle – Quebec’s Medicare system.