U.S. Healthcare
& Canadian Healthcare
That’s the beauty of Capitalism:
You pay for what you get
(and that’s how it should be)
 I have been listening to the new resounding battle cry of every democratic candidate for President of the United States over the past year, and every Democrat out there wants universal healthcare in the United States.
To give you some background of where I’m coming from, allow me to explain… I voted for Bill Clinton when he ran twice in the ‘90s. My voting choice may have been because I didn’t want Bush #1 in office for more than one term, and my voting choice may have been because I wanted to attribute President Bill Clinton with the tremendous economy we had throughout the ‘90s. But now I can tell you (now that I’ve thought about it more) that even though I’m in a Democrat state (thanks to Chicago), I wouldn’t call myself a Democrat (and no, I definitely don’t call myself a Republican).
I tell you that to let you know my leanings aren’t screamingly Democrat, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them Republican either.
I have to say that when it comes to healthcare, my decisions are based on my own personal experience (duh, how could you base anything on anything other than what you know). I have never been poor enough to worry about whether or not I could afford any medical treatments. If I had to go to the doctor, I went. I might not have liked the cost, but I was willing to pay it, because in this country, it costs money to be able to afford the best healthcare (because no, unlike what Democrats tell you, healthcare is not a right). When I had healthcare through my most recent career job, I had no healthcare coverage for medications (so when I took anything, I paid full price for it). When I had healthcare at my most recent career job, there was no dental coverage (which means that because I am cheap, I didn’t go to the dentist for years, good ting I didn’t have cavities). In fact, I wasn’t even going to pay for healthcare when I quit my job and traveled around the country, because I never even used the healthcare coverage I paid for in my job. Thank goodness my roommate convinced me to get coverage anyway, because someone almost killed me in a car accident 8 months after I left that job, and if I didn’t pay for healthcare coverage I would still be paying off the astronomical medical bills from 1998.
So maybe my personal experience tells me that it is crucial to pay for healthcare coverage, because it can really save you in the end. That for day-to-day medical problems it may not be perfect, but it is better than nothing. I know some people say they can’t afford it, and. . . Well, this sucks of me to say, but I can only speak from what I know (and I have always been able to afford something for healthcare.
If someone says they can’t afford healthcare, does that mean I should help them pay for it? My answer is a flat-out no, and I want you to understand why. When I see a bum on the streets in Chicago (I’m sorry, a homeless man) with his hand outstretched looking for change, I never give them anything. I do my best to ignore them, anything, because when I am walking to and from my work, I feel they aren’t earning their way to anything in life. I don’t feel like contributing to their Pursuit of Happiness if they aren’t willing to do something to earn their rewards (because asking for money isn’t considered a legal job, and I don’t care to hear about how some homeless people can pull in good money without paying taxes by just asking for money from people who hold jobs).
So I might sound like a stodgy money-grubbing old man when I talk like that, but if people don’t work for money, they don’t deserve it. It’s that simple. If you tie that concept together with healthcare, I believe it is fair to say that if a person can’t afford healthcare, than it shouldn’t be freely handed over to them. I mean, in the United States we don’t guarantee a television in every home, but people who are poor enough to live on welfare have television sets. In fact, people on welfare receive checks and food stamps, but they aren’t told how to spend their money, so they can make whatever smart (or bad) choices they want with their money. Every individual can make their own choices on how to spend what money they have.
Wow, I probably still sound like a real stooge after trying to explain myself. But I’m sticking with my “American way” argument
All of this leaves me thinking about listening to every Democrat during this year-and-a-half long Presidential debate. Everyone during this election talks about how universal healthcare is affordable, and how every person should have the rights for cradle to grave healthcare. This is where my blood starts to boil. It makes me angry, but because I don’t believe everyone deserves the opportunity for healthcare (because in the United States you have the best chance of getting good healthcare, versus in any other country). It makes me angry because when you change the way healthcare is in this country (making it less Capitalistic and less American to allow it for everyone), you will reduce the chances of good healthcare to everyone.
Think I’m lying with my theses here? Consider the amount of money they currently goes into the healthcare system, then take that same amount of money and spread it evenly so that everyone can have. That will force healthcare to be increased for some, but reduced for others.
People in the U.S. want to order prescription medication through Canada, because it’s cheaper than what they get the same drugs for here in the United States. But there are reasons the drugs cost so much more here, and it’s not sheer profit (although in some respects the drug creators deserve it, because they create drugs that help us live, and they should be properly compensated for their work):
One reason is the R&D required to make the drug is actually incredibly time-consuming and expensive (trust me on this one; I’m married to someone why has worked in the industry for years and years, so I know). It can take upwards of a decade of research with a specific set of available chemical compounds and elements to come up with a working drug idea. And that idea may be rejected because of the potential drug’s lack of feasibility or need. With the amount of time it takes to create a compound usable for anything, probably only one out of every 10,000 drugs created can be used and released for sale.
Now, that’s a Hell of a lot of time, and a Hell of a lot of money, to be able to come up with just one medication.
Reason number two is the philanthropic reason from our drug companies. These companies create drugs, say, to help fight AIDS, or help with other basic illnesses. There are people in many third-world countries who are suffering and cannot afford any medication at all, so U.S. drug companies gives their live-saving drugs to many people or sell them to third world countries at highly discounted prices to help save lives, because they feel it’s the right thing to do. Many companies, for example, give money to charities; this is a way large drug companies and their major shareholders can be charitable. Also, some countries (like France) have a fixed price they will pay for any drug (or you can sell drug A in our country if you sell B at a fixed price, there are pages of details from some countries around the world on how drugs can be sold in other countries). These two factors drive the price down in other parts of the world for a drug that companies have invested a lot of time and research into creating. Because of this, drug prices have to remain at a premium in the United States to help compensate for other markets where the drug after release actually loses money for their creators.
I totally understand that, but I still would rather pay less for my prescriptions (sorry, that is the cheap side of this Capitalist, but I think everyone wants to pay less for drugs). So you pay for any healthcare coverage that will give you a discount on medications you may need. However, to ask your government to take care of that aspect of your lives is asking too much of your government. If the government takes control of your healthcare system for you, should the government also monitor what foods you’re allowed to eat? Because that has an effect on your health, as does smoking, and not exercising enough (I’m sitting here typing at a computer all day instead of hunting for foraging for my daily food, and being active enough to remain healthy).
And the thing that’s really funny about this is that prices for anything healthcare related only started rising a lot in the 1970s. You’d think that may be because of the increase in medical lawsuits (well, that would have been my first guess), but I heard that the initial rise in prices was more in line with the government’s intervention in healthcare, by starting Medicaid and Medicare. Most people don’t think Medicaid or Medicare is enough, and with all of the advances companies in the United States have been able to come up with to help us prolong our lives, prices do go up (probably a lot more than what Medicaid and Medicare was originally designed to help with).
But when you look at things with a more historical perspective like that, isn’t it funny to see how more government intervention actually makes something like healthcare worse? So is giving our government more power over our healthcare for “universal healthcare” might not be the smartest idea.
I hear all of the Democrats talk about how universal healthcare is possible for the United States, and it makes me think of a more socialistic medical system (which isn’t American). I look around, and I see that leader of other countries, when they have medical problems, they come to the United States for surgeries and treatment, so I wonder if the capitalistic method, when applied to healthcare, is the best for everyone. It may mean that some people in this country will not get the best treatment, but looking at the healthcare system in the United States versus in any other country, they will probably get better treatment in the United States versus any other country in the world.
People have been complaining during this election cycle that everyone in the United States needs better access to healthcare. So the Democrat jumped on the “healthcare for everyone” bandwagon. But I fear that in making those choices we will be degrading what we can do as a country for everyone’s medical needs, and making us no longer the best. People want a free slice of the healthcare pie, but people have to remember that you get what you pay for. That sound cruel and callous, but people who work throughout their lives for better food and better lifestyle regimens (in exercise activity, etc.), they get longer life. People who make poor choices (eating too much bad food, smoking too much, remaining sedentary) subconsciously make choices about their health.
Every choice every individual makes throughout their lives is a part of their healthcare regimen, financially or otherwise. Allow me to explain: my mother had breast cancer and cervical cancer in the mid 1990s. After surgeries and procedures, she had a clean bill of health. After talking with my doctor, I learned that I should be doing annual gynecology exams and PAP smears immediately, and I should start annual mammograms 10 years earlier than most women should. Then 10 years after my mother’s clean bill of cancer health, she contracted a particularly virulent strain of leukemia (if cancer can’t beat her with cancer in one organ, they’ll try cancer of the blood this time). Since I did everything I could with my doctor in watching for cancer, I started to look for other things that I could do as an individual. Not smoking was one (check). Eating cruciferous vegetables is another (What’s that? Broccoli and cauliflower are cruciferous vegetables. Okay, add broccoli to stir-fries and on pizzas, and snack with cauliflower instead of potato chips. I can do that). Walk more (check). You see, these are things I can do keep my health in check, and can be things to help fight off cancer. For those who don’t have money, well, it might cost more to eat broccoli and cauliflower versus potato chips (though I not quite sure), but it doesn’t cost anything to walk more, and it saves money to stop smoking. That’s what I mean when I say that every choice every individual makes throughout their lives is a part of their healthcare regimen, financially or otherwise.
But people are still trying to purchase their drugs in Canada versus in the United States, and people want a more cost-efficient healthcare system in the United States. Well, Canada has a free healthcare system, so why don’t we become more like them? I wouldn’t have been able to answer that question unless my husband explained to me how he was listening to Canadian talk radio while driving through northern Ohio on a sales call for work (850 AM on your radio, my husband thought it might have been called ‘dial’). This radio show he listened to centered on “free” health care that the Canadian Government provides to its people.
My husband wanted to stress that free should be in quotes, because it didn’t really seem free. He said that in listening to the radio talk show, even those that supported the system admitted that it had many shortcomings. One person (who even supported the system) said on the radio that he had to wait several months for gallbladder surgery, and this was after he had waited nearly three years for an accurate diagnosis. The man my husband heard on the radio admitted that his health has suffered irreparable damage because of this, but in his words, “I guess that the price you have to pay for free health care.” A woman spoke of traveling over into Michigan to get reliable medical attention (Yes, a Canadian was coming to the United States for healthcare needs, not the other way around). She had ovarian cysts the size of grapefruits and was supposed to have surgery, but her anticipated wait time was eight months. My husband even heard the radio host admit to spending thousands for personal health insurance for herself and her family. The radio show host even said that this extra money spent for better healthcare improved the level of treatment that she received, but she still preferred going into the United States for her treatment. Another man who called in admitted that it sounded like a good idea initially, but he didn’t realize that this free health care was going to increase his taxes by over $4,000.00 annually (which hardly seemed to make it free).
The VAT (the value-added tax) is supposed to help pay for this health care, but Canadians close enough to the U.S. border come to America to buy goods to avoid the VAT, and avoid the taxes that were intended to pay for the health care that they wanted to be free in the first place.
Now, these stories were not first-hand stories told to me personally, but I trust my husband with what he heard. So to get additional perspectives on this, so I talked to Gabriella, a medical intern in New York who is from Nova Scotia. She agreed with something my husband heard mentioned on talk radio during his drive, and that was that many Canadian doctors are choosing to move to the United States to become doctors, because there is a much wider field with many more choices as a doctor. Granted, she said, there seem to be far too many specialists in medicine (I know if I ever have a problem, my family doctor seems to refer me to someone else), but there is a growing trend for Canadian doctors to move their practices to the United States. This means that there are far fewer doctors to choose form in Canada (I believe she even said something like there seemed to be only 10 choices of where to go for an additional doctor’s opinion in the entire country). This all means that people in Canada have to wait an insanely long time just for a diagnosis of their condition (before waiting an additional inordinate amount of time for treatment). This also means that if some Canadians spend extra for additional doctor care (partially because of the wait with “free” healthcare in Canada), they still may not have enough options to choose form for the health care they are willing to pay for.
Keep in mind that I got this information from a Canadian woman who has been living in New York for the past four years to finish her schooling to become a doctor.
This woman even commented that she never thought the concept of “free,” or “universal healthcare,” would ever work in the United States. We both are not the first people to say that there are people who are willing to abuse the system via welfare, to live on next to nothing with government handouts, and abuse the free healthcare they get, and continue to stay in the system and rear children to do the same. As a woman who sees the system on many levels personally, Gabriella said the hard part is for the people who are willing to work (and have too much pride to take welfare), but cannot earn enough money at a job to afford healthcare for their family. She sees these people firsthand, and it breaks her heart to see how these people genuinely work hard but cannot afford healthcare.
I have never been in the position where I could not afford healthcare, so I cannot guess what I would do in that position. There are Democrats out there who want to adopt a system that in essence is un-American to help people with healthcare problems. But all adopting a system like that will successfully do is lower the standard of healthcare for all people here.
I reflect on how leaders of other nations have healthcare problems and come to the United States for surgeries and healthcare. I think Mikhael Gorbachev came to the United States for medical assistance, and Fidel Castro received medical assistance from the United States (and I know there have been others, I just can’t think of their names off hand). I say this to you because leaders of other countries come to the United States for healthcare . . . because we’re good. Because of capitalism, and the ability to work hard and receive the benefits from helping others, we have been able to make great strides in the healthcare profession.
The thing is, if we have to give our medical answers away to everyone (that’s what universal healthcare would do), we just wouldn’t be able to afford it. Healthcare has gotten more and more expensive (thanks to government intervention in the first place), so more advanced methods may actually be too costly for absolutely everyone. Democrats say we could afford it, but they say that to try to be elected as your next President. If there are people who need medical healthcare coverage, there may be some sort of middle ground between the socialist ideas of Democrats in this country and the opposite end of the extreme. Government intervention is what made healthcare originally out of reach, so all I can think is that more government intervention will only make healthcare problems even worse.
Copyright © 2007 Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.
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