Wall Street Opinion Journal Monday, June 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
A landmark ruling exposes Canada’s health-care inequity.
Let’s hope Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy were sitting down when they heard the news of the latest bombshell Supreme Court ruling. From the Supreme Court of Canada, that is. That high court issued an opinion last Thursday saying, in effect, that Canada’s vaunted public health-care system produces intolerable inequality.
Call it the hip that changed health-care history. When George Zeliotis of Quebec was told in 1997 that he would have to wait a year for a replacement for his painful, arthritic hip, he did what every Canadian who’s been put on a waiting list does: He got mad. He got even madder when he learned it was against the law to pay for a replacement privately. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston or Cleveland, as many Canadians already do, he teamed up to file a lawsuit with Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal doctor. The duo lost in two provincial courts before their win last week.
The court’s decision strikes down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and is bound to upend similar laws in other provinces. Canada is the only nation other than Cuba and North Korea that bans private health insurance, according to Sally Pipes, head of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of a recent book on Canada’s health-care system.
“Access to a waiting list is not access to health care,” wrote Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin for the 4-3 Court last week. Canadians wait an average of 17.9 weeks for surgery and other therapeutic treatments, according the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. The waits would be even longer if Canadians didn’t have access to the U.S. as a medical-care safety valve. Or, in the case of fortunate elites such as Prime Minister Paul Martin, if they didn’t have access to a small private market in some non-core medical services. Mr. Martin’s use of a private clinic for his annual checkup set off a political firestorm last year.
This is one isolated example used by the author to draw a hasty generalization. The fact is America would be much better off with universal health care and tha advantages it confers:
1) It’s, um, universal. Everyone is covered, not just the lucky duckies with good jobs (or spouses with good jobs).
2) It levels the playing field for corporations. Corporations that offer decent healthcare to their employees are currently at a disadvantage compared to both domestic competitors who don’t cover their workers as well as to overseas competitors whose workers rely on national healthcare systems.
3) Universal healthcare allows you to choose a doctor and stay with her. You aren’t forced to switch doctors whenever you get a new job or your company’s HR department decides to change health plans. Guaranteed long-term relationships with physicians can have a significant impact on long-term health outcomes.
4)It covers people who are high-risk or who have pre-existing conditions. Employer health plans often don’t for certain periods of time.
5)It provides continuing healthcare coverage for workers who temporarily lose their jobs.
6) If the experience of European systems is any guide, both overall health outcomes and satisfaction with health coverage is considerably higher under universal systems than under the U.S. system. Despite spending far less per person than in the U.S., quality of care is high and, contrary to Heritage Foundation legend, waiting times in the well-run systems are generally short.
7) In the U.S., Medicare recipients are far more satisfied with their health coverage than those with normal employer-based health plans. Stunningly, even the poor, who largely rely on Medicaid and emergency rooms, are more satisfied than those with employer plans