Say Anything Blog

Dr. David Gratzer, writing in the Wall Street Journal, also makes a good point about just how dependent the Canadian health care system is on America’s.

Indeed, Canada’s provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery—described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as “broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain.”

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

So how about it, America?  Do you want to have to win a lottery to see the doctor?

That grim spectacle aside, the point about nationalized health care systems being dependent on America’s health care system is an apt one.  I’ve argued for a while now that America is the pressure relief valve for the rest of the world’s health care systems.  Canadians who can’t be treated in their national health care system, or who want to opt out of it and pay for their own health care, routinely come to America for care.  Catering to Canadians seeking health care is an industry unto itself along America’s northern border.

And the international pharmaceutical market is propped up by the American market.  Drug makers wouldn’t be able to afford all the research and development that goes into creating new wonder drugs if they had to rely on what they make by selling their products in markets where the government controls the health care markets and controls drug prices.  By charging higher prices in America, they can afford the R&D and the smaller profit margins in places like Canada, Great Britain and Australia.

So if America goes nationalized health care, it won’t just be Americans that suffer but people all over the world too.