Correct me if I err, but the Canadian health care system is usually lauded to the skies by the proponents of NAtionalized HEalth CAre administration (I'm going to call it NAHECA for short) in these United States.  The Los Angeles Times posted an article on Sunday dealing with a possible move towards partial privatization in Canada! What on earth could be wrong with those people?

In Canada, a move toward a private healthcare option

In British Columbia, private clinics and surgical centers are capitalizing on patients who might otherwise pay for faster treatment in the U.S. The courts will consider their legality next month.

By Kim Murphy
September 27, 2009

Vancouver, Canada - When the pain in Christina Woodkey's legs became so severe that she could no long hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary, Canada, resident was told she'd need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she'd have to wait about a year.

So wait she did.

In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was set for Sept. 30. "When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery," said Woodkey, 72. "They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor."

So this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days.

"I don't have insurance. We're not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada," Woodkey said. "It's not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I'm happy to say the pain is almost all gone."

Whereas U.S. healthcare is predominantly a private system paid for by private insurers, things in Canada tend toward the other end of the spectrum: A universal, government-funded health system is only beginning to flirt with private-sector medicine.

Hoping to capitalize on patients who might otherwise go to the U.S. for speedier care, a network of technically illegal private clinics and surgical centers has sprung up in British Columbia, echoing a trend in Quebec. In October, the courts will be asked to decide whether the budding system should be sanctioned.

More than 70 private health providers in British Columbia now schedule simple surgeries and tests such as MRIs with waits as short as a week or two, compared with the months it takes for a public surgical suite to become available for nonessential operations.

"What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list," said Brian Day, a former Canadian Medical Assn. director who runs a private surgical center in Vancouver. "You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for healthcare, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list."

Yet the move into privatized care threatens to make the delays -- already long from the perennial shortage of doctors and rationing of facilities -- even longer, public healthcare advocates say. There will be fewer skilled healthcare workers in government hospitals as doctors and nurses are lured into better-paying private jobs, they say.

"What it means is that people who have no money, who are chronically ill, disabled, who require medical attention frequently, are going to suffer dramatically," said Leslie Dickout of the B.C. Health Coalition, which is involved in the lawsuit to determine whether the Canadian Constitution guarantees citizens the right to choose their own care.

"There's so much money to be made by the insurance industry," she said. "If this [legal] case succeeds, what we would have is a system of U.S.-style healthcare -- along with a public system that is decimated."

Indeed, an investment group backed by Arizona businessman Melvin J. Howard this year filed a $160-million challenge under the North American Free Trade Agreement, demanding that U.S. healthcare companies gain access into Canada. The consortium hopes to build Canada's largest private health center in Vancouver, offering orthopedics, plastic surgery, general surgery and other services.

More at the link.

One quote bothered me:

"What it means is that people who have no money, who are chronically ill, disabled, who require medical attention frequently, are going to suffer dramatically," said Leslie Dickout of the B.C. Health Coalition, which is involved in the lawsuit to determine whether the Canadian Constitution guarantees citizens the right to choose their own care.

This bothers me because it's the natural corollary to something Harry Browne said:

Government breaks your leg, hands you a crutch, then tells you that, without government, you'd be worse off.

The corollary, of course, is that once government has built the immense bureaucracy to administer health care nationally and decimated private practice, it can turn around and complain that the public system – which decimated the private system in the first place while claiming that we'd be worse off without government – will be decimated and that its sub-standard care will get worse because of the brain drain to the private sector.

Thus the government gets to have it both ways: claiming that health care will be better when the goverment controls it...but when the private system proves to provide better care, the government can claim that health care will be gutted.  And, oh! Those greedy doctors and nurses who will desert government care like rats from a sinking ship to join up with private clinics!  How could they?

They could because they know that government is the main stumbling block to better care overall.  Government gets to stack the deck whatever way it likes; then, when it wants to call a re-deal because it doesn't like the cards, it can do so and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  It'll keep re-shuffling and re-dealing the cards forever, all the while decrying the private system -- which had to accept the stacked deck.

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