Just another victory for socialized medicine:

AN operating theatre in one of Queensland’s busiest hospitals sits idle four years after being built, while waiting lists for surgery grow.
The purpose-built “E1” theatre has never been used since the new Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane was rebuilt in 2002.

The State Government is considering a bid from the Australian Medical Association Queensland to set up a brokerage system to cut waiting lists by arranging for patients to have publicly-funded surgery at private hospitals.

Meanwhile, the operating theatre on the fourth floor of the hospital in Woolloongabba continues to gather dust.

After being contacted by The Sunday Mail, a Princess Alexandra spokesman said the “E1” operating theatre would be brought into use next month.

But Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said it was “a travesty” that it had taken so long to begin operations in the theatre while thousands of people were on waiting lists.

“It seems to be a recurring theme with certain areas within Queensland Health that there’s inefficient use of expensive resources,” he said.

So why was this OR sitting idle even while there were patients on waiting lists to get procedures done?  Because hospitals in a government-run health care situation have no incentive to make efficient use of their resources.  Hospitals get a budget from the government to provide health care services to the people, and every operation they perform counts against that budget.  Thus having an OR sitting unused matters little to hospital administrators who get no benefit from putting that resource to use.

This is in contrast to our health care system, where hospitals administrators aren’t likely to tolerate unused medical resources.  If there is a demand for a medical service hospital administrators are going to do what they can to meet it as efficiently as possible, because that’s how they make the most profit.  This system isn’t perfect, of course, but you see how the market and cost-benefit pressures in our system result in better service for those seeking medical care in this country than those seeking it in places with socialized medicine.