A new, comprehensive report on Canadian health care by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian research organization, clearly demonstrates that the quality of Canada’s health care continues to deteriorate and their costs continue to rise. 

The Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan group, measures and studies a wide range of topics including health care. The Institute’s list of participants has grown to 350 experts in 22 countries, 6 of whom have been awarded Nobel Prizes. Their most recent report entitled How Good Is Canadian Health Care? 2008 Report compares the quality of health care of Canada with the 28 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) who also have socialized medicine. Canada does poorly by comparison and here are just a few excerpts from the report:

• Canada spends more on health care than any country in the OECD except Iceland and Switzerland
• Canada is the only country in the OECD that outlaws privately funded purchases of core health care services
• Canada ranks 14th in access to MRI’s and 19th in access to CT scanners among OECD countries. (On a per capita basis, the U.S. has 8 times more MRI units; 7 times more radiation units; 6 times more lithotripsy units and 3 times more open-heart units than Canada)
• Of the 28 OECD countries, Canada ranks 17th in life expectancy and 24th in infant mortality. 

Other recent studies show a slight decrease in wait times for physician visits and treatments in 2007 but the average is still over four months which is a major reason that the survival rates of virtually every form of cancer are higher in the U.S. than in Canada or the U.K.

Those who advocate socialized medicine for our country resort to outlandish and false statistics to support their cause. They continually cite the “obscene” profits of the U.S. health insurers as the reason for the high cost of health insurance. The truth can be found in the Fortune 500 listing which confirms that the average profit margin of the top 10 U.S. health insurers was 5% in 2007. This is not obscene by any standard. 

Another myth that they perpetuate is that the overhead cost of Medicare is a mere 3.1% while the same measure is 26.5% for the Blue Cross companies. The absurdity of this statement is obvious when the truth is brought to light that Medicare subcontracts all of their service, claims processing and management to Blue Cross/ Blue Shield companies in 48 of the 50 states. Why would the Blue’s be so efficient in handling Medicare administration and so inefficient with their own? It makes no sense but then neither does socialized medicine when you know the truth about it. 

The recent economic meltdown demonstrates how well government manages its responsibilities. Would you honestly want to see those who made such a disaster of regulating, overseeing and inspecting banking, finance, investment houses, mortgages, education, the economy, energy, and the environment, in complete charge of the health care delivery system of the United States?

Sure we pay more for our health care but we get what we pay for…the finest health care in the world. We need to take on the special interest groups and address the well-known issues that account for 30-40% of health care costs so that health care and health insurance will be more affordable to more people. Socialism has not worked to the long-term benefit and general welfare of the people, anywhere it has been tried. We don’t need to prove its failings once more by destroying the health care system or the country of the United States of America. 

Stan Alekna lives in Cornwall, Lebanon County, and is a former CEO of a TEXAS HMO and served on two statewide committees for the Texas Department of Insurance.

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