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medpundit |
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004Resources are limited. Ditto for government budgets. And so choices have to be made, notwithstanding the dual fictions that health care is "free" and that those who need it will not be denied. Someone has to be denied, and guess who that is increasingly: the elderly. Why "waste" expensive procedures and devices and medicines on someone who is going to some eternal reward relatively soon when a far more deserving (read: politically defensible) patient also is on the waiting list? Alas, it does not, it will not, it cannot stop with the elderly. "Free" health care in Canada means that waiting lists are long, patients deteriorate while waiting, such "cheaper" devices as plastic artificial knees are used in place of aluminum ones, and those who can travel and pay for medical care go to the U.S. And those who cannot? Well, they suffer. As day follows night, health care will be denied the mentally ill, the desperately tiny prematurely born, those whose prospective "quality of life" in someone's politicized view will be inadequate. That is the tragic road toward which nationalized compassion inexorably will lead. This is not because the system is afflicted with correctible inefficiencies or because budgets are not fully funded or because doctors/hospitals/pharmaceutical producers/insurers/bureaucrats/name your goblin are greedy/corrupt/uncaring. It is because "free" health care cannot overcome the basic and eternal condition of mankind: Wants exceed resources. posted by Sydney on 12/07/2004 11:05:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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