From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: National Health Care
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Curious Goods (formerly Louis Vendredi Antiques)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 20:43:23 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.183354.15487@kadsma.kodak.com> pajerek@kadsma.kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>In article <92238.112556DGS4@psuvm.psu.edu> <DGS4@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>
>>I've never said that government is a "model of efficiency", only
>>that in some cases, markets do fail, and society may need other 
>                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>institutions, including government, to cope with that failure.
>
>I agree with this, but clearly many extremists in this newsgroup don't. 
>It seems to me that a market system can only be used for goods/services 
>that can be produced at a profit; there is no market for money-losers. 

Since Americans (not just Pat Buchanan) like to talk about how close
they are to Canadians and western Europeans, sharing the values of
democracy and (working towards) free market principles, should this
diverge in the area of amortizing health risks across a national
population?  I mean, the non-Americans work and consume and have
similiar expections for service and value, and yet you never hear a
peep against the way the health systems are run there except from
Americans who've never left their own borders (even to Canada) let
alone their own regions.  And those of you who have Canadians and
western Europeans at your work site or graduate school will find it
hard to elicit such comments from them, person-to-person.

>Yet, sometimes those money-losers are goods or services that society 
>needs.  So, how to provide them, when the private sector can't and/or 
>won't (and for good reason)?

In Canada, France and Germany, in the richer half of the G7 with the
U.S., our biggest question was how to reconcile the non-market and the
market aspects of health coverage so we started and ended with basic
health insurance.  Frills according to class, if you can buy private
supplementary coverage for private rooms, etc.  Private doctors and
private hospitals ... if you're wealthy or savvy in Canada, you can
gain an edge by being involved with a private hospital such as our
family did with L'Hopital St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, as do
people I know in Toronto (Toronto-Mount Sinai, Sick Children's, etc.)
and in Montreal (Davis Jewish General).  When my mother was diagnosed
with inoperable liver cancer (no cure, so forget armchair doctoring)
a few strategic phone calls speeded her tests and got her under the
care of their top oncologist who is also a renown researcher (yes, we
do research in the rest of the West but American papers are too lazy
to write about it because they think their readers don't care -- that
may be right); among them was my dad's high school friend (who wanted
a career in rock-n-roll sax, but became a doctor) who has affiliation
at the hospital, our family lawyer (who heads the fundraiser for the
research institute), and an administrator whose kids are very close
friends of my siblings.  My sisters remember hearing the nurses and
interns ask each other, "The same Dares who gave us all that Chinese
catering?" (for their black-ties) -- which made the chart in front of
them a lot less faceless.  Mother would have done all right even as 
an ordinary Jane Canadian, but these little things probably made some
difference in the end.

(If you hadn't guessed from all that, my family became upper-middle
class when I was in high school (but I stayed behind) and with it they
were able to scale to the upper part of our supposedly single-tier
system.)

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				Elections 1992-93:
> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		* Jean Chretien (Canada)
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			* Perot^H^H^H^H^H Elvis! (USA)
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