Founder of Canada’s system leaning private

Published 9:47 am Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Have you ever heard of Claude Castonguay? Until a few weeks ago he was a hero of those favoring a single-payer health care system (otherwise known as single-payer socialism). He was known as the father of the Canadian health care system. Eventually, socialist ideas collide with reality and the failure of these ideas becomes obvious to anyone with an open mind. After heading a committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, he has concluded that the system is in “crisis.” He is recommending a “greater role for the private sector so that people can exercise more choice.” Lesson here: When someone else is paying for your health care, they will decide whether you get to have any choices, and if so, which choices you will be allowed to have.

What kind of problems with Canada’s single payer socialism health care are we talking about?

1. People in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

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2. Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman had a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds and was unable to get timely care in Canada. She went to Pontiac, Mich. Where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few more weeks. The Canadian government refused to pay for her care because she didn’t properly fill out her form for reimbursement.

3. Since the spring of 2006, Ontario’s government has sent at least 164 patients to the U.S. for neurosurgery emergencies — defined as broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain.

The truth is that government bureaucrats cannot centrally plan their way to better health care. Why should we be climbing aboard the foundering ship of socialism when one of the founding fathers of Canadian government-run health care system is abandoning it?

 
George Lundstrom

Albert Lea