Op-Ed

Health Care or Health Scare ?

How does Cape Cod health care compare with that of Canada?
Let's have Wellfleet compete with Winnipeg

By Richard Bartlett

In Canada doctors run their own practices and are paid by provincial agencies.

In the current national debate about health care reform our northern neighbor is often cast as a reprehensible boogieman.

Those indebted to the medical insurance lobby's massive slush funds insist on calling the Canadian plan socialized medicine, even though it isn't.

In a socialized plan the doctors are on salary. In Canada doctors run their own practices and are paid by provincial agencies using national funds.

How does our good but expensive Cape Cod health care compare with that of Canada?

Using national averages let's have Wellfleet compete with Winnipeg.

Entries on Google for this comparison number 3,290,000 with some in conflict with others. Only the most recent posts from the most reliable sources are used here.

WHO ranks Canada 30th, with the USA trailing at 37th.

Winnie (Winnepeg) vs. Willie (Wellfleet)

Winnie of Winnipeg spends $630 (in American currency) of her own money on health care.

Willie from Wellfleet spends $2719 out of pocket.

Winnie's government spent $1533,

Willie's spent $2168 on health.

Winnie's doctor graduated with a $70,000 loan debt,

Willie's owed $140,000.

1% of Winnie's medical cost goes for paperwork, whereas it's 31% in Willie's case.

Winnie's doctor has absolute authority in deciding on expensive items like MRIs and special treatments with no government interference.

Willie's case is different. His doctor has an insurance bureaucrat intervening to keep profits up.

Canadians live longer and have a lower infant mortality rate than we do

Republican U.S. Senate leader  Mitch McConnell has taken $425,000 in medmoney since 2005

We hear a lot of fallacious talk about long lines for treatment in Canada. The Republican leader in the U.S. Senate Senator Mitch McConnell  (who has taken $425,000 in medmoney since 2005) said on CNN that a knee replacement in Ontario required a 340 day wait.

Checking on that, a skeptical CNN sent a reporter to the very hospital the Senator had referred to and found it was 91 days on average. The other 249 days were a fiction designed to scare us into sticking with the flawed status quo.

And even with all the cost savings, Canadians live longer and have a lower infant mortality rate than we do. In fact, the World Health Organization ranks Canada 30th, with the USA trailing at 37th.

The Boogieman Northerners are doing just fine. We could do as well if we can just avoid being conned.

Richard C. Bartlett, Cotuit