When Government Controls Healthcare

With the clamor for 'something' to be done about healthcare in the USA and with an election that has installed a liberal Democrat president and Congress, the likelihood for some significant change in our healthcare system is high. Will a single payor system be implemented with the government assuming control of our healthcare system? If that does become reality we need only look Northward to visualize what we may experience.

Canada has had such a government controlled system for years. While all Canadian citizens are covered, what type of coverage do they receive?

Most government healthcare programs, whether it be the Medicare/Medicaid system in the US or the Canadian healthcare system, are seeing huge increases in expenditures for providing healthcare. Unable to adequately fund these burgeoning expenses, these systems are limiting the services that are provided through rationing. In Canada, while all citizens are covered, coverage is rationed by delays or denials of treatment. In Canada, patients must wait for such services as CT scans and elective surgeries until the government says they can provide these services for you. So while these Canadian citizens are covered for these services they are unable to receive them in a timely manner due to the limited capacity of the government to fund delivery. Slowing the delivery of services reduces the money spent on these services. In fact, some patients in such a 'rationing' system may wind up dieing before the services are performed, thus saving the government from delivering and paying for the services at all.

If a single payor, government controlled healthcare system is enacted in the USA, the government not you will be in control of your healthcare. Bureaucrats who gave us the thousands of pages of IRS regulations and the regulations which led to the current financial crisis will now be controlling your healthcare and....literally...your life. This sends a chill down my spine, what about you?

Of course those making the rules for our healthcare, Congress, has their own healthcare system developed just for them. No they won't be participating in our nationalized healthcare system...they won't be 'eating their own cooking'. The bureaucrats they put in charge of the system will make decisions on what and who is covered for what ailment. Perhaps they will decide lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking is your own fault and not covered. Perhaps they will decide diabetes treatment is not covered if you are overweight. Perhaps they will decide your knee replacement can wait a year of two...just get in line. Perhaps they will decide you are too old to be treated for your disease...after all the old '80/20' rule applies in healthcare too where most of the cost of a person's healthcare is delivered in the last year of so of their lives. Could be quite a savings if we just eliminate that coverage.

You can ask and plead your case to the 'system' but the system is the same bureaucats who made the rules to begin with. Of course the 'review' process will take time too!

If you want government controlled healthcare you may actually get it soon. Then you may wonder why you wanted it in the first place.