Government-run insurance not all that scary

George Le Masurier

of the Gateway

ON Monday, the U.S. Senate announced it would include a public option in health care legislation expected by the end of the year. Immediately, the news caused controversy.

I don’t know why. Creating the world’s largest insurance pool to drive down the high cost of protecting ourselves from financial ruin certainly sounds like a good idea to me. The devil’s in the details, of course, but every other leading civilized country has some version of this same idea. Why not America?

While thinking about this point, I came across a column by Stephen Lautens in The Calgary Sun, who recently visited the U.S. for a business conference. Here are some excerpts from his article:

“When hearing the horrors of the Canadian health-care system being described last weekend, all I could do was wince.

“After holding my tongue while my American hosts debated their own health-care issues, I couldn’t help but butt in later when I overheard two ladies discussing Canadian health-care in the lineup for the bar.

“Would they like to speak to a real, live Canadian about our health care, I asked?

“Can you pick your own doctor?” was the first question. “Because we hear the government assigns you a doctor in Canada.”

“You indeed pick your own doctor, I assured them, although getting doctors out to remote or small communities is a problem, as it would be in a free market system where there aren’t enough paying patients.

“It was also not true I said that it takes months to see your doctor. Mine complains she doesn’t see me enough. There are gaps in our system, I confessed, where there are unacceptable wait lists for some kinds of surgery-- hips and knees and other things in demand.

“We’re not perfect, but serious things usually get seen pretty fast, even if that is small consolation to people with chronic but non-life threatening problems who sometimes go to the end of the line.

“What’s your health-care premium?” they wanted to know. They quoted theirs as being a couple thousand dollars a month.

“Their jaws dropped when I told them there really isn’t one and everyone is covered from birth.

“At this point, a small crowd had gathered around me at the bar to hear the Canadian tell his magical tale of health-care coverage.

“I told the story of breaking my shoulder in a fall, having one of the best shoulder specialists in Canada put it back together, a few days at the hospital and nine months of physiotherapy. The cost?

“Thirty-five dollars, because the sling I went home in wasn’t covered.

“Someone said she recently had heart palpitations that required an MRI and tests and was presented with a bill for $15,000, which she was still paying off at $500 a month.

“What about the hospital death committees?”

“This is the wildly popular Fox News story that the Canadian government has people in hospitals pulling the plug against family wishes to save health-care dollars.

“I assured them we stopped putting people on ice flows years ago, and not just due to global warming.”

Reach publisher George Le Masurier at 853-9248 or via email at publisher@gateline.com.