The ultimate repercussions of state-run health care and the inability to individually choose one’s fate are coming to light, and even already exist as the state-run portions of our current system show their true colors.  I read comments by people stating “I have relatives in Canada and they prefer their system to the US system. “  Which raises a few questions for me.  What do they love about it?  What do they know about our system? They may like the out-of-pocket direct cost in their system (especially if they are naive to the actual costs through taxation) but may be even more ignorant to what they are giving up because they are unfamiliar.  I might even say that we need health care reform but my reform would come by eliminating government involvement in health care altogether!

Our problems come from much more than “greedy” companies who simply work with in market constraints that are skewed by government involvement.  A simple example: You may have seen commercials for companies such as “the Scooter Store” or others attempting to sell durable medical equipment like power chairs and such.  Many of these companies charge substantial amounts for their chairs, upwards of $10,000! Even at $5,000 there is substantial profit.  One might say “look how they gouge for medical equipment, those greedy capitalists!” until they realize these absorbent prices and massive profits didn’t exist until medicare came to save the day.  If medicare wasn’t paying these outrageous bills, no one could afford the products and the companies would either go out of business or be forced to lower their prices to be more competitive due to natural market forces.  Even if they went out of business, another company would see the void and fill it with affordable solutions.  The problem isn’t in the market but the welfare state that supports it! So we don’t have an open market anyway, what we are hoping is that it does not worsen.  Check out this video regarding what I’m talking about by John Stossel.

The beauty is that those claiming their “relatives” like the Canadian system or that of the UK, statistics speak to me the opposite. Not that they don’t like it but that it is not nearly as effective.  I mean, if you like death than you like crappy health care systems! A recent editorial in Investors Business Daily gives some great insight:

Big numbers are already a fact of life in the United Kingdom, where the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. It’s no surprise, then, to discover that while breast cancer in America has a 25% mortality rate, in Britain it’s almost double at 46%. Prostate cancer is fatal to 19% of American men who get it. In Britain, it kills 57% of those it strikes.

The health care bureaucracy is just as ugly in North America. Sally Pipes, a Canadian who heads the Pacific Research Institute, wrote in these pages on July 2 that in 2008, “the average Canadian waited 17.3 weeks from the time his general practitioner referred him to a specialist until he actually received treatment.”

Even the courts are recognizing the system’s in trouble. Canadian Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps wrote in her 2005 majority opinion in Chaoulli v. Quebec: “The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some cases, patients die as a result of waiting lines for public health care.”

Even their own supreme court noted the problem.  It gets worse, however, when you think about treatment at any cost to save a life.  How do they decide when to spend money and when not to? Since you aren’t paying, you can’t make that choice.  This can be seen in what is described as “death panels” by some (supporters of gov care don’t like that term of course).

Last year, the 64-year-old received news that her cancer, which had been in remission, had returned. Her only hope was a life-extending drug that her doctor prescribed for her.

The problem was that the drug cost $4,000 a month. The state-run Oregon Health Plan said no, that it was not cost-effective. Oregon’s equivalent of a “death panel” sent her a letter saying it would cover drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost only $50 or so. Oregon could afford that.

“It was horrible,” Wagner told ABCNews.com. “I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die.

“But we won’t give you the medication to live.”

The $4,000 could be better spent on someone else.

Even the President’s own advisors will admit the same possibilities exist and are justifiable:

Death panels are already here it seems, just as they have been for some time in Britain and Canada. The concept behind deciding who lives and who dies and how finite resources should be allocated was described by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

In his paper, “Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions,” he expounds on what he calls “The Complete Lives System” for allocating treatments and resources.

“When the worse-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly,” he says, “allocating to the better-off is often justifiable.”

Ode to the outcomes of gov run health care… Check out this video by John Stossel regarding his experience in these other countries.

Tags: health-care, Obama, Politics, socialism