Canadian Healthcare

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starsforu2

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I'm not back :madspit: I just thought that this court ruling and the lack of medical privitization in Canada should at least be in the air to read and digest. 2 Articles from the right (so you can be warned) where it's coming from.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050622.shtml by Walter Williams

"Plaintiffs Jacques Chaoulli, a physician, and his patient, George Zeliotis, launched their legal challenge to the government's monopolized healthcare system after having had to wait a year for hip-replacement surgery. In finding for the plaintiffs, Canada's high court said, "The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public healthcare system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public healthcare. The evidence also demonstrates that the prohibition against private health insurance and its consequence of denying people vital healthcare result in physical and psychological suffering that meets a threshold test of seriousness." Writing for the majority, Justice Marie Deschamps said, "Many patients on non-urgent waiting lists are in pain and cannot fully enjoy any real quality of life. The right to life and to personal inviolability is therefore affected by the waiting times.""

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/pj20050619.shtml by Paul Jacob

"While some Americans argue that our health care system should be copying Canada's single-payer national (read: government-controlled) health care system, a recent ruling by Canada's Supreme Court ought to cause some serious reconsideration. Deadly serious reconsideration.

Canada is the only industrialized country that actually prohibits citizens from privately contracting for medical care. In other words, no matter how much money Canadians can afford to pay, they're stuck in the public's health care system waiting and waiting and waiting for care.

Or, when they can afford it, giving up on waiting and traveling to the U.S. to get it."
 
just to be clear: that case was out of quebec, which has its own separate civil law system, and technically that ruling only applies to quebec (as the challenge was a quebec constitutional challenge, and not the canadian charter of rights). it's not clear how this is going to play out in quebec just now, and it's also not clear what the ruling means for the rest of the country.
 
starsforu2 said:

Canada is the only industrialized country that actually prohibits citizens from privately contracting for medical care. In other words, no matter how much money Canadians can afford to pay, they're stuck in the public's health care system waiting and waiting and waiting for care.


I see the point behind this article, but I'd like to respond to this statement b/c this really goes both ways. Where I'm from, there are a number of wealthy families, some of the wealthiest in the US. One guy in particular had bad heart problems years back and needed a heart transplant. Well, since he's a multi-billionaire, he could pay his way to the top of the waiting list. What if your dad or grandpa was on that list, also waiting for a heart transplant, and got put off even more b/c someone else could fork over a couple hundred thousand and get his heart right away? Is THAT fair? I don't think so. It caused a bit of local controversy since these people give millions and millions every year for schools, museums, a sports arena, a children's hospital, a medical research center...etc. so overall they're good people.
 
I'll paste a link where there's a good defence of the Canadian public system:

http://rationalreasons.blogspot.com

Regarding the Supreme Court decision, note this: "It is a bitter irony that Mr. Zeliotis, one of the complainants in the Supreme Court decision that opened the door to private insurance, would not have qualified for the coverage he sought" [from private insurers].
 
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