Posted by Tina
Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits, by David Gratzer IBD Editorial
Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec then the largest and most affluent in the country adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies. ** Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.” ** “We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.” ** Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.
IBD Editorial writer David Gratzer, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a physician licensed in both the U.S. and Canada, has written a book: “The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care,” now available in paperback.