The belief that private medicine is somehow evil and dangerous has become so ingrained in Canada that merely including the words "private" and "medicine" in the same sentence will cause people to react with horror as though one had just advocated genocide or worse.
The mere thought that any citizen, if allowed to do so, could acquire better medical services than any other by using (horrors) money sends them into a panic. Thus we are not allowed to pay for any medical service covered by government. The result, as is typical with any government monopolized service, is scarcity and rationing.
Presently in Ontario, getting a simple MRI requires getting on a waiting list that can be as long as 13 months! Waiting weeks or months for a diagnostic test can result in unncessary pain, disability, and even death. Waiting lists essentially defeat the entire benefit of such tests, and medicine as a whole!
But, the reasoning goes, it is not "fair" that some ("the rich" of course) would be able to get better medicine than others, that such "two-tier" (shudder) medicine is immoral.
So let's see how such egalitarianism works in practice:
In a free-market system, it is true that there will be some that cannnot afford the best diagnostics or the best doctors, or the insurance to acquire same, while others enjoy good treatment whenever it is needed. Everyone, of course, would fall on various points in a scale rather than all being at one extreme or the other.
Under our "fair" egalitarian system, everyone is entitled to equal services and, of course, everyone believes those equal services will be good - if only government would spend enough. The actual result, since every expenditure in a government system is a cost and to be avoided, is that everyone gets equally poor service - and waiting lists for most things.
Or to drive the point home a little more clearly, picture two kids suffering from some condtion causing them much pain and which might evetually kill them if not treated soon enough. One is in a poor family, the other isn't...
In the free market, one child will get immediate diagnostics, treatment will begin, the kid will most likely be relieved of pain and of the possibility of premature death. The poor child may not be able to get needed treatment as quickly and may have to accept less than the best. In rare cases this may even result in death.
But the actual chance of dying as a result of having a free market is extremely remote for several reasons: 1) It is a very small minority that would be in such a circumstance to start with; 2) Faced with such a desperate case, few doctors if any would turn their backs, they would give needed aid first and worry about payment later, if at all; 3. Most importantly, in a free market, supply rises to meet demand - with the result of wiping out waiting lists and making aid available sooner for everyone; 4. Finally, charity still works in a free market at least as well as it does now.
In our "fair" system, both children suffer in pain for many months or even years, and both have an equal chance of dying prematurely since neither of them is permitted to get timely diagnostic tests or medical treatments. With no profit motive, there is no incentive for supply to meet demand because everything is a cost. The motivation is exactly opposite - and the result is what we have - currently over 28,000 people in great pain and disability waiting up to a year to get hip replacement surgery.
Somehow, in this country and many others, it has been decided that the latter is somehow better, that it is more desirable that two children suffer needless pain and possibly even die - in the name of egalitarianism.
Somehow it has become accepted that, if not everyone can get the best then none is to be allowed to have it; that rather than allowing the majority get the best medicine their money can buy, all are to be held down to a mediocre but equal level of care.
To my American neighbours, this is where your system is currently headed if you do not seriously begin to fight it now.
