Idealism and reality in medial systems

Hooman and me have been discussing about socialized medical system and private medicine. He says that he prefer the Canadian Medicare system. But I think the private based medicine is more effective. He has some reasons. He says many Americans do not have health insurance (more than 40 millions or 17 % of society). Private insurances are expensive and only rich people can afford it. He says that this is injustice. He prefers to live in a country like Canada even it does not have an excellent health care.

I also believe in justice. But sometimes we mix between reality and our ideals. I think this kind of approach is more emotional than rational. The most important point, which is ignored, is the quality of services. Proponents of social systems say that all Canadians enjoy Medicare. But they do not talk about its quality and efficacy.
In my belief, medical system is kind of business. I think that socialized systems are managed by beaurocrats but private systems are run by business people. The first one is wasting time and money and the second one is effective and productive (of course we can discuss the roles of insurance and pharmaceutical companies; But can we find a perfect system?). Private system can adjust to new situations, but social system has an extremely complicated structure to change itself. The last but not least is this very fact that all medical systems in the world have a parasitic relationship with US medical system (in terms of research and science) and they will die without US help!

So I think “ Good services for Some people is better than Poor services for Many people. “People who catch common cold may not understand what I am say, but you have to ask people who have serious disease like cancer and they have to wait for couple of months. This is the reason that many Canadian patients go to US for better care!

(posted by Iman)

Posted:Wednesday, August 13, 2003 |