National Health Care Systems

Last Friday I posted a response to a comment (on another website) which suggested, among other things, that "... the American healthcare system is NOT envied around the world."

In that response I made some fairly definitive statements, among them:

• In some National Health Care (NHC) states, medical emergencies are not prioritized;
• Waiting time for such expensive technical diagnostic facilities may be longer than the time needed for early-diagnosis to be effective;
• The patient may die before diagnostic can be made available;
• Patients are not permitted to 'jump' ahead of less-critical patients, even if they are willing and able to pay for diagnostic services out of their own pocket.
• Some patients are so desperate that they travel to other countries (such as the U.S.A.) for diagnostic treatments and operations because they cannot legally and/or administratively receive emergency medical services in a manner which is sufficiently timely to avoid succumbing to their pre-diagnosed disease.

I realize that these claims may not be easily accepted, because they fall so far outside the usual boundaries of a rational health-care system.

But I assure you, they are not only factual, but well documented.

Consider the case of one Ontario, Canada citizen named Lindsay McCreith.

In 2006, Mr. McCreith was tentatively identified by his family physician as having a cancerous tumor in his brain. Because of the NHC regulations in Ontario, he could not be scheduled for a necessary MRI to confirm the tumor within a survivable timespan. He could not schedule either the MRI or the (probably) needed operation to remove the tumor within the 'safe' period after which the tumor would become inoperable, nor could he qualify for governmental permission to go outside the country for medical intervention under the NHC payment plan within that same timespan.

Eventually, due to a recent improvement in Mr. McCreith's economic situation, he was able to pay the $28,000 needed to travel to the USA, get the MRI confirmation of brain cancer, and have the tumor "the size of a golf ball" removed.

That was in late 2006 and early 2007. He is now suing the Province of Ontario for his out-of-pocket expenses, which would not have been necessary if his Socialist State NHC system would have been able or willing to provide him the medical support which he had been lead to believe was available under the Ontario NHC System.

Here is the story:


(go here for the link to the video.)


Everything I said earlier about the sad state of National Health Care systems in Socialist States (even the most benign and benevolent, such as Ontario in Canada) is absolutely true and verifiable.

Yet Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, challengers for the Democratic Party Nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America, have professed their respective intentions to establish exactly this kind of National Health Care Systems in America.

In point of fact, Clinton attempted to do so in 1992, immediately after her husband Bill Clinton was elected President. The American people rejected this bizarre, unworkable socialist scheme 16 years ago; will we be as wise in November of 2008?