Free Healthcare - Pernicious Nonsense

This election cycle the two Democratic candidates for President of the United States are both pushing universal healthcare. I have direct experience of it (a better name is socialized medicine, but that has negative associations they are trying to avoid) and though I am second to none in preferring to use my money to buy Manolo Blahnik shoes and Fendi purses, bitter experience has led me to believe that we are going in the wrong direction to fix the problems with American healthcare.

For years I’ve told stories about my family in Canada; my mom waiting 4 months for an MRI to find out if a brain tumor was cancer, an uncle having to have an emergency bypass in the US because the Canadian estimate of how long his failing heart would last was off by 50%, but recently I ran across a healthcare blog with stories identical to mine except for the ending—my family survived the delays. Click here for a happily ending video about another Canadian with a brain tumor that brings it home. The waiting lists for care are unconscionable in Canada, but if it weren’t for people dying before they get their care or coming to the US, they would be even longer. The Oscar winning movie The Barbarian Invasions opens with an evocative scene in a hospital in Quebec with wiring hanging from the ceilings and the halls jammed with patients on gurneys.

Unfortunately, no matter how thoroughly or often the dream of universal healthcare fails, hope springs eternal. My friends who want “free” healthcare get thin lipped and silent when I talk about how sick you have to be to get care and how corrupt the system has become. They don’t want to hear it. My family in Canada cling to their fantasy that they can only manage because of the generosity of the government, regardless of the injuries and deaths waiting for care has caused. There is a rosy-glasses blog here that pooh-poohs the problems in much the same way. I can only assume that the writer has never been told that the government has decided he can live for a year so he can have heart surgery in 9 months.

I needed carpal tunnel surgery some years ago. I had some permanent nerve damage so I scheduled the surgery in 10 days. If I had been in Canada I would have been told that since it wasn’t life threatening I had to wait 8 months. By that time, the nerve damage would have progressed, making it less possible for me to continue to work and function more or less normally. Medical care, even for non-life threatening problems, that has been postponed for months is not the equal of timely care. A patient is much sicker, less likely to fully recover, than if they had been cared for right away. More damage has been allowed to happen. In the case of cancer, it can make the difference between life and death. In other cases it can make the difference between ability and disability. Free medical care is a pernicious fantasy.