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August 6, 2008
Canada Resorts to Lotteries to Ration Socialized Healthcare
Vermin-beset Britain isn't the only country to warn us away from the looming disaster of nationalized healthcare. There's also our neighbor to the north:
In the latest jarring illustration of the country's doctor shortage, a family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine which patients would be ejected from his overloaded practice.
Dr. Ken Runciman says he reluctantly eliminated about 100 patients in two separate draws to avoid having to provide assembly-line service or extend already onerous work hours, and admits the move has divided the close-knit community of Powassan.
Yet it was not the first time such methods have been employed to determine medical service. A new family practice in Newfoundland held a lottery last month to pick its caseload from among thousands of applicants. An Edmonton doctor selected names randomly earlier this year to pare 500 people from his heavy caseload. And in Ontario, regulators have heard reports of a number of other physicians also using draws to choose, or remove, patients.
Socialism creates poverty not only by destroying incentives, but by interfering with the laws of supply and demand. Attempts to mandate "free" healthcare have created infinite demand. At the same time, government interference has made the medical profession much less appealing, drying up the supply of doctors.
Our own corrupted legal system, which allows ambulance-chasing bandits like John Edwards to loot doctors for outrageous fortunes, thereby driving malpractice insurance costs through the stratosphere, has had a similar effect. In the end, we'll be forced to chose between doctors and economic freedom on one side, or bureaucrats, lawyers, and moonbattery on the other.
On a tip from Darrin P.
Posted by Van Helsing at August 6, 2008 9:32 AM
Comments
More moonbattery from Britain.
You'll have to read it yourselves. Words fail me.
Posted by: Rob Banks at August 6, 2008 12:53 PM
Will we see masked, traveling Canadian doctors and nurses who travel from town to town, working outside the law to give needed medical treatment? If anything, it would make a good movie.
Posted by: KHarn at August 6, 2008 5:22 PM
