Even the Communist Chinese Think Canada’s Socialist Healthcare Is Dumb
October 18, 2016 4 Comments
So some Chinese government officials wanted to learn a bit about Canadian healthcare. It seems they were baffled by the stupidity of our system.
Becky Akers writes:
Ah, Canadian medicine! Single-payer, socialist paradise, totally “free” (sic for “paid for by others”)! As American communists continue their attempts to nationalize the entire medical industry, not just the insurance companies that pay for it, they insist that Canada’s method is the world’s best.
Alas, “Chinese government officials” who know a thing or two about totalitarianism disagree. A group of them visited our northern neighbors because they were “interested in learning about Canada’s health care system.” “…[O]ne of British Columbia’s regional health authorities … had only begun outlining” how things work there, yet “already his guests seemed confused.”
He started explaining the basic principles again, in even simpler terms: The government decides what are medically necessary procedures and those procedures are covered by universal health insurance, free at the point of delivery.
…Residents cannot go outside the system and pay for their own medically-necessary treatments, unless they want to travel to another country.
“Stop there,” the translator said. “It’s that last part that is confusing the delegation. They think you’re saying that Canadians cannot spend their own money on medically-necessary health care.”
Yes, he assured them, that’s right.
The translator pressed him: “You mean to say that if you’re sick and want to pay for treatment, that you aren’t allowed to? Even though it’s your own money and there is a doctor willing to accept it?”
Yes, that’s right.
There was a pause as the translator relayed the answer to the delegation and the delegation conferred among themselves. Finally, the translator spoke up: “They say that even the Chinese communist system is not this restrictive!”
And this potentially fatal authoritarianism is many Americans’ ideal, the scheme they hope to inflict here.
— Thanks to LRC —
CANADIAN MARKET REVIEW 
And just what precisely are you prescribing????
Healthcare that isn’t completely dumb. Even “socialist” Sweden has less socialist healthcare than we do.
Single payer is the most economic group plan formula – but the population needs to be on top of local management of health care. As Dr. Ron Paul said in 2012, he would be all in favour of universal health care if it were run by the neighbourhood, and not run federally.
If I understand what you’re saying then I disagree that single payer is the “most economic group plan”. Either a) because I think it’s misusing the term “single-payer” (which generally deals with a compulsory public health insurance program). I mean, actual group insurance like what employers get for employees isn’t “single-payer”); OR b) Single-payer isn’t really compatible with the basic premise of insurance — it is entirely _uneconomical_ and ensures healthcare costs will only sky rocket. Even if the “single payer” is on a smaller scale like your neighborhood or whatever.
Insurance is about pooling of individual risk based on some common features shared by people in the pool. Ultimately, some people will come out ahead (receiving more than they pay for insurance) and most people will come out behind (pay more in than they receive). But the whole idea is that whatever group you’re dealing with, the outcome within the class needs to be basically unpredictable (even if you can statistically predict payouts for the whole). Otherwise, I would want to get pooled with people who end up paying more than they receive because that would lower my own costs (i.e. a non-smoker would want to get pooled with other non-smokers rather than smokers, for example).
Rather than insurance, single-payer systems are a form of wealth redistribution, from lower-risk healthier people to higher-risk less healthy people. That’s because the key feature of single-payer systems is that they don’t discriminate between people with different levels of insurance risk at all.
A real health _insurer_ needs to be able to discriminate between different types of risk (i.e. include or exclude any risk factors in its policies). Uninsurable risks should not be covered.
Single-payer doesn’t work.