May 06, 2008 07:58 pm
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By DAVID TROUT
This is in response to the editorial in the April 16 issue of The Herald Bulletin that was reprinted in the Lafayette Journal & Courier on April 19.
‘Crisis is the clarion call of the tyrant.” This has been variously attributed to Pericles, Julius Caesar and others. No matter who first said it, the truth is still there. So it is with the “health care crisis.”
Reportedly, there are 46 million people in the United States without health insurance. But that figure includes everyone who had no insurance even for one day or even a few hours in the year in question. Those between jobs and who were without insurance for one day, those who choose not to be insured, the homeless (meaning bums), and those who cannot afford it are all included in that number. However, one can always get care by going to any emergency room. One must receive care, and if the emergency room staff cannot do the care, that patient will be assigned to a general physician or specialist who will do the care. I have cared for those patients many times during my medical career. One of the requirements of being on any hospital staff is to care for patients who are referred by the ER. If people die because of lack of health care, it is due to their own negligence, and not the fault of “The System”.
In the UK, you are taken off renal dialysis when you are over age 55, and one must wait for up to two years for a joint replacement. The costs of waiting in a wheelchair and removal from dialysis cannot be measured accurately. Of course, these don’t appear in the government statistics, but are real costs of delayed government health care that are displaced into other categories and onto the patient in the form of suffering and lost work.
There are several groups in Canada, one is called the Canadian Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, that keep track of the number of patients who have died while waiting for government health care. Some of these groups say that many die for want of treatment, because of denied treatment, or while waiting for approval for treatment. They accuse the government of killing more than many other causes of death in the Canadian population. There is no category in the government statistics for that expense.
When I was still in practice, I used to take a magazine called Medical Economics. In one issue, there was an article about a man whose dog had a seizure. He took the dog to the veterinarian that day. He was told the dog needed a CT scan, and it could be done that night at the hospital. The man asked why he had to wait for three months for a sinus CT, but his dog could get a brain CT that night. The answer was that the government gave the hospital enough money to run the scanner until 10 p.m. After that, the veterinarians could use it. That story was later followed up and was admitted to be true.
Early on, when CT scanners were relatively new, Seattle had more scanners than Canada. I believe we even had one in Lafayette very soon after that.
Isn’t it ironic that Canadians often come to the United States for the care they need, and Americans are increasingly looking to Canada for a health care model.
The hidden costs of government provided health care, not only in terms of dollars, but also in terms of suffering, are astronomical. If you think health care is too expensive and hard to get now, just wait until it is “free.”
David Trout is a resident of Lafayette.
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