There are nights when there is nothing worth watching on television and a few like last night. There were the results from the Iowa Caucuses, disappointing, the Canadian Juniors playing Russia, disappointing, and an interesting spin on Canadian healthcare, all going on at the same time.
Radio talk show host Jerry Agar was doing a substitution stint for Ezra Levant on the SUN NEWS channel, and the entire show was devoted to Canadian healthcare. Mr. Agar elaborated on two myths about healthcare:
- Government is the only entity caring and efficient enough to offer health care to Canadians.
- Canada provides the same healthcare service to the poor as to the rich.
He used a report produced by the Fraser Institute recently, titled Waiting Your Turn, and pointed out that monopoly services are controlled by making customers wait. Who can forget the long lines for bread and toilet paper in the former Soviet Union which monopolized the production and distribution of goods? In Canada, healthcare is a monopoly, and too many Canadians suffer from a nationalistic, chauvinistic attitude that somehow our healthcare system makes us better than our American neighbours. Its past time to stop that silliness.
Watch the video here and then you may want to watch HEALTHCARE HULLABALOO, afterward with Dr. Roy Eappen, familiar to many of us, as he comments on this issue.
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ReplyDeleteThe point of my posting (not the first time on healthcare) is that whenever a government pretends to deliver a service, the outcomes are usually less effective and more expensive than would occur if it was a free market situation.
ReplyDeleteIn Ontario government healthcare is a virtual monopoly, and the population tolerates this because of the myths that are perpetrated by politicians and the media.