New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | November 18, 2004

John R. Graham backs up The Barbarian Invasions' negative view of nationalized health care.

Comments

digamma|11.18.04 @ 1:47PM|#

Am I the only person who saw this film and thought it had very little to do with politics? Yeah, they show Canadian hospitals and unions doing bad things, but that's a very tiny portion of the film.

aix42|11.18.04 @ 2:57PM|#

Two-tiered health care is a scare phase used way down here in Canada, problem is the one tier we have now is the second. Let the masses keep the bare minimum, let the private sector supply the first tier. It's like we all have to drive Trabants cause not all of us can afford a Honda.

Highway|11.18.04 @ 3:09PM|#

aix,

But everyone gets a free car! Oh, and this year, they're taking air conditioning out of them because it's gotten too expensive. So we have to take it out of everyone's Trabant. Wouldn't be 'fair' otherwise...

aix42|11.18.04 @ 3:12PM|#

yeah, free. We don't pay for it, the Government does.....

Jeff Smith|11.18.04 @ 4:24PM|#

The movie is great - though not about health
care really as noted above.

Not much meat in the article though, other than
pointing out obvious facts about the movie.
More needs to be done to point out the troubles
of Canadian health care in a way that will make
them compelling to Americans. The case also
needs to be made that the failings of the
Canadian system actually understate those that
would arise in a similar American system because
Canada (rationally) free rides on both our drug
research and the organizational innovations
produced in our market, and also because
Canadians are less compulsive about rules than
Americans, which softens the impact of their
bureaucracy.

I've never been quite sure of the point of
pieces like this one, which are sort of
reassuring sound bites for the converted.

Oh, and I really like the line about having only
the second tier. I'll be using that one.

Jeff, who avoided the health care establishment
entirely (well, other than the dentist) in my
seven years in Canada, and is very glad of it.

|11.18.04 @ 5:17PM|#

Who is the politician that is able to say that the Canadian Health Care System can't (or won't) pay for a single piece of equipment? Sad story, even sadder if it's mostly true, but no politician in this hemisphere with an open checkbook would allow someone to publicly go untreated if a treatment were available.

Color me skeptical.

|11.18.04 @ 6:55PM|#

John R. Graham seems to have problems distinguishing fiction from reality.

'The Barbarian Invasions' is a work of FICTION. It is an effective piece of socio-cultural criticism and a sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire' (1986) that involved another slice of life with the same set of characters (same actors also). I am not sure one can fully understand the sequel without talking about the first movie. It is a story of a man's renewed relationship with his son as well as new found appreciation for old friends. The chaos surrounding the dying man is only relevant to illustrate his loss of control and growing isolation. One has to be very dense to see this movie as a factual criticism of the Canadian health care system.

What Mr. Graham attempts to do is similar to trying to describe the Vietnam War by talking about Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now is a cinematic masterpiece but it is not a factual analysis of the war. I guess that making a political point was more important than strict reliance on reality for Mr. Graham. After all, he is affiliated with a well-known conservative (some would say right-wing) think-tank.

My father died of cancer in a Canadian hospital. He received all scans, surgeries and treatments his condition warranted. Short of having a dedicated team of doctors and nurses exclusively assigned to his care 24 hours a day, I cannot see what more could have been done.

I was born and raised in Canada but have lived in the USA for the last 14 years. So, I do have some perspective on each country's health care system. Both have problems that need fixing. But overall, I think the US system is more dysfunctional than its Canadian counterpart: at least the Canadian system makes health care available to all its citizens, fulfilling the major purpose of a health care system. When one considers the problems of the US system, the really scary aspect is that no one seems to be able to come up with even the beginning of a coherent solution.

|11.18.04 @ 11:36PM|#

Wow, someone from the Fraser Institute thinks Canada's health care system sucks?! I am shocked, shocked.

(I hope you in the USA realize how marginal these people are in Canada. They are to the right of nine-tenths of the Conservative Party, which is to the right of 70 percent of Canadians...)

I have lived in both Canada and the USA, and I have had longer waiting for non-emergncy procedures in the USA.

|11.19.04 @ 12:37AM|#

I hope you in the USA realize how marginal these people are in Canada. They are to the right of nine-tenths of the Conservative Party, which is to the right of 70 percent of Canadians...

So that puts them, what... slightly left-of-center for the United States, I guess? :)

I have had longer waiting for non-emergncy procedures in the USA

Sounds like you need to switch doctors, then.

|11.19.04 @ 1:05AM|#

There are plenty of tragic situations where Canadians who have had to come down here for surgeries that they were on a waiting list for waited to long and suffered damage that could have been avoided with more prompt attention.

American Medicine needs deregulation to fix it, not collectivization in the manner of Canada.

The White Anglo Saxon Protesta|11.19.04 @ 4:22AM|#

Agreed, Rick B., but tell that to the Social Security crowd. My father is retired Medicaid director for the state of Nebraska, my mother used to work for DHS doing critical care review for long term care facilities. There are so many who have been so entrenched in the bureaucratic system for so long they don't remember going to a doctor and paying cash for the visit. I try to point out the direct correlation between the rise of both public and private third-party payer healthcare and the spiraling cost of that healthcare, but it falls on deaf ears.

Being a sometime musician, I liken it to feedback that builds up if you put a hot microphone in front of the P.A. speakers. The signal spirals up and up until it deafens everyone. An engineer would refer to it as trying to control a system with positive feedback. It never works, always ends in disaster, but that's what we're doing by trying to control costs by making a third party pay the check.

|11.19.04 @ 8:50AM|#

I don't know, as read, that brief blurb of an article could just as easily describe "for profit" health care here in Chicago. At least my experience of it.

drf|11.19.04 @ 10:26AM|#

Skepitkos:

CINS? that group? which other for profit centers have you experienced?

"Oh, and this year, they're taking air conditioning out of them because it's gotten too expensive. So we have to take it out of everyone's Trabant. Wouldn't be 'fair' otherwise..." --

-- actually the airconditioning is bad for the environment. dammit man. think of the children.

as for dysfunctional health systems, don't get the care confused with the myriads of government-induced barriers to access in the name of "fairness".

Leaf, i have negative anecdotes from canada health, too. however, because of family, i've never had problems here, so i can't speak to that, but your bristling response kinda smacked of wounded national pride. it's medicine, not hockey. grin (not bating, just having fun with a hockey comment, since we're talking about canada)

have you spent time on the west coast? tofino is beautiful!

cheers,
drf