“The United States is the only civilized country that does not have ‘free’ healthcare!” –Jane Doe
This statement was spoken today by a woman dealing with some potentially serious medical problems. She was concerned about the high cost of medical testing. Not to mention the medical bills to come later if she actually undergoes treatment. I feel for her situation, unfortunately, Jane Doe’s statement above shows a devastating lack of knowledge. I am not aware of any country in the world that provides “free” medical care. Jane might be referring to Canada and Euroland countries that provide a government run medical system. She’s not referring to those countries because they all send their patients to the US when their system fails to meet demand.
Because Canada does not have the capacity to deal with the demand for neo-natal intensive care for premature births, the single-payer system sent the critically ill child to the United States for treatment. […]
But why wasn’t there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of Canada? The government of Canada won’t pay for more. They don’t exist to expand supply to meet demand; their single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism. In a free-market system, supply expands to meet demand, which is why Canada could subcontract out to a US hospital for capacity. Michael writes that paragraph as if it was mere luck that an NICU bed happened to be open in the US, but that’s a function of the system, and not luck.
If there was any country in the world that could provide actual gratis medical care surely they would not soil themselves to receive our capitalist medicine.
Another explanation for Jane’s misunderstanding is that she fails to consider the extreme level of payroll deductions that every employee pays with no thought whatsoever. The story would be different if every employee were allowed to keep all of their money and had to pay it quarterly like a business. It seems though that Jane won’t see the true cost of “free” healthcare because her money will be stolen from her before she ever sees it.
Finally, Jane Doe’s last complaint about American healthcare was the two week waiting period before she could have her testing done. Click to see embedded video…
50 day wait times? hmmm…