The Cost Cutters Called Suffering and Death

From Touchstone an idea of what nationalized healthcare looks like...
...Price controls have driven many doctors to the States; and the generally lousy schools have done a poor job preparing young people (young men in particular) for careers in science. Most of the doctors I've met are not Canadian, and with that comes all the problems of transience, and sometimes uncertainty about the adequacy of their preparation. But even assuming that they have all been well-trained, there aren't enough of them, not by a long shot. The shortage shows up in personnel, and then it shows up in machines, available tests, even beds in hospitals. Let's say you live where we do in the summer, and you need a hysterectomy, or a gall bladder removed, or something that is not absolutely urgent, but that will cause you a good deal of pain. You wait. You may wait as long as a year; I've seen this happen. You wait for a bed to open up, sometimes in Halifax, 200 miles away. But you need to be ready on the day when the bed is available. So people are told when their number is about to come up, and if they're not there when it does, the bed goes to the next person in line. That means that people stay in motels in Halifax for a week or two when the date draws near. Folks around here will hold raffles or other fund raisers to help a neighbor defray the costs; it is a regular occurrence.
But then, you can't keep the bed, either, as long as you should. My sister, an infectious disease specialist in Pennsylvania, tells me that the argument in the States is over how long you should be without fever before you are discharged from the hospital for treatment for infection. My neighbor up here was discharged with a fever, and with intense pain in her surgical incisions (she was back in the hospital two weeks later; this woman waited nine months for her three operations, nine months of pain). ...(more)