National health care unhealthy

By Gerald M. Ward

Saturday, November 26, 2005 12:31 AM EST

Kenneth G. Knight's article promoting nationalized health care stirred my emotions to boiling, having had my 46-year-old daughter die in Canada 12 years ago.
She lived with a malignant tumor for four years before it was diagnosed, three months before she died. She was not allowed to be examined by an oncologist until her family physician decided she must have a tumor.

The issue was that the MRI units were too busy to check unknown conditions. At that time, there were more MRI units in Kentucky than in all Canada.

Restrictions on various health needs, such as surgery, are the rule in nationalized health programs. To quote from a Reader's Digest article, “the U.S. health care system is far from perfect, but is the best in the world.” In nationalized health programs, restrictions are placed on various health needs such as surgery.

Joint replacements are scheduled years ahead and patients over 70 years of age are encouraged not to have needed surgery. My wife and I have had seven total hip replacements and she has had both total knee replacements, when she was 80 years of age. Thanks to Medicare and Blue Cross policies, we had little out of pocket expense, except the premiums on the policies.

To quote from the articles in the Reader's Digest, Canada's most populous province shut down hospital wards and restricted surgeries for three weeks with doctors going unpaid and non-emergency patients untreated.

Thousands of Canadian physicians have moved to the U.S. because of restrictions put on them by the government. In the same articles and quoting from Dr. Walter Bobachko, a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon, who left Canada to practice in America, “The saddest thing to see is the diminished expectations of Canadians. They are settling for third world medicine and saying over and over, ‘at least it is free.'” Canadians are taxed much higher than we in the USA to support their nationalized health program.

Mr. Knight's statement that the time has come for all of us to jump on the bandwagon to effect change that must come for our country to survive and compete in the world economy, has a communistic theme.

Our nation has a stronger economy with much less unemployment than any country in Europe. Our unemployment is 5 percent, and in European countries it is more than 12 percent.

I hope Mr. Knight is watching the devastation in France and other European countries that is making their countries very dangerous.

Their minority population has been ignored and even with their socialized systems, millions are unemployed and out of the “health-welfare programs.”

In contrast, in the U.S., with our millions of immigrants, the U.S. has included most of the population in a health care system that treats sick and injured patients that arrive at emergency facilities.

Ward writes from Auburn

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