Sunday, June 12, 2005

Canada's Court Decides, So Should We

The lesson for Americans is beware government-run health care that the democrats are so insistent on blessing us with. Imagine having to struggle for a year to get the right to pay for your own medical treatment. It's closer than you think.
Keeping the Kerrys and Clintons of this world out of power is key to preserving not just our way of life but perhaps our very lives themselves. Of course, John and Hillary would never have to wait for an operation because they're too important to the left's dismantling of America project.


Canada's Supreme Court yesterday struck down a Quebec law that banned private insurance for services covered under Medicare, a landmark decision that could affect the country's universal health-care system.


A year ago, supporters of Canada's government-run health care monopoly stood aghast as a Quebec doctor named Jacques Chaoulli and a hip-surgery patient named George Zeliotis presented the Supreme Court of Canada with an original argument. Medicare's waiting lists have become so dangerously long, they asserted, that legally banning people from paying for their own health care or purchasing private insurance violates the Charter of Rights' guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person. The justices responded with questions that implied some sympathy to the notion that patients should be able to select between private and public care.

The Chaoulli/Zeliotis arguments make eminent sense. Canada is alone in the world, save for the communist states of Cuba and North Korea, in punitively preventing its citizens from paying for core medical services through private insurance if they so choose. The price of maintaining such dubious company is that an untold number of Canadians die each year as a consequence of not receiving timely treatment, and many more suffer unnecessarily.

Information from The New York Sun and Canada.com.

2 comments:

Jamie Dawn said...

Thanks for sharing this about Canada's health care system. Too often, their system is touted as being something we should be striving for.

BobG said...

Yes, Jamie, that's why I think it's so important to bring this to people's attention. It could happen to us.