Posted by
Always To The Right on Sunday, June 28, 2009 12:39:34 PM
. . .
Because Canada does not have the capacity to deal with the demand for
neo-natal intensive care for premature births, the single-payer system
sent the critically ill child to the United States for treatment. . . .
. . . it’s impossible to look at this situation without seeing
the relative merits of the American and Canadian systems. First, the
child would have gotten care in the US, too, regardless of insurance
status. People get emergency care regardless in this country. There
is a difference between health insurance and access to care that some
people elide for purposes of political argument. No one gets turned
away from emergency care for lack of ability to pay.
But why wasn’t there a NICU bed for the child in the entire
nation of Canada? The government of Canada won’t pay for more. They
don’t exist to expand supply to meet demand; their single-payer system
exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism. In a free-market
system, supply expands to meet demand, which is why Canada could
subcontract out to a US hospital for capacity. Michael writes that
paragraph as if it was mere luck that an NICU bed happened to be open
in the US, but that’s a function of the system, and not luck. These
parents are separated from their child at the moment through the fault
of Canada’s government and not the US.
. . . When we handle our health-care system like Canada, where will
Canadians send the next NICU case they can’t handle? And where will
America send ours?