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Saturday, September 01, 2007
Bill Steigerwald :: Townhall.com Columnist
Uh-oh, Canada
by Bill Steigerwald
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


If Canada's national health-care system is so dang wonderful, why are so many Canadians coming to America to pay for their own medical care?

Why is the hip replacement center of Canada in Ohio -- at the Cleveland Clinic, where 10 percent of its international patients are Canadians?

Why is the Brain and Spine Clinic in Buffalo serving about 10 border-crossing Canadians a week? Why did a Calgary woman recently have to drive several hundred miles to Great Falls, Mont., to give birth to her quadruplets?

It's simple. As the market-oriented Fraser Institute in Vancouver, B.C., can tell you, Canada's vaunted "free" government health-care system cannot or deliberately will not provide its 33 million citizens with the nonemergency health care they want and need when they need or want it.

Courtesy of the institute, here are some unflattering facts about Canada's sickly system:

Number of Canadians on waiting lists for referrals to specialists or for medical services -- 875,000.

Average wait from time of referral to treatment by a specialist -- 17.8 weeks. Shortest waiting time -- oncology, 4.9 weeks. Longest waiting times -- orthopedic surgery, 40.3 weeks. Average wait to get an MRI -- 10.3 weeks nationally but 28 weeks in Newfoundland.

Average wait time for a surgery considered "elective," like a hip replacement -- four or more months.

Hello, Cleveland.

The Canadian system is horribly short on consumer choice and competition. But it isn't all bad -- if you don't mind waiting to access it. As health policy analyst Nadeem Esmail of the Fraser Institute said last week, it does "a decent job of saving your life but treats you terribly in the process." Continued...
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About The Author
Bill Steigerwald, born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a former L.A. Times copy editor and free-lancer who also worked as a docudrama researcher for CBS-TV in Hollywood before becoming a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a columnist Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Bill Steigerwald recently retired from daily newspaper journalism..
 
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Reply # 1
Date: Sep 10, 2007 - 1:53 PM EST
snake0311 writes, 10, 2007 9:21 AM
DESKJOCKEYR RESPONDS

The first fund was 1923 in Boston started with three investors, the second one in 1924. I thought your 12% was for US funds only not Europe too.

Your friend’s anecdotal assumptions contradict fund performance researchers. Also small caps have not performed at 12%. If you just look at the ones that are still solvent it isn’t 12% let alone accounting for the millions that tanked. Similarly the DJ is not up from 40.94 in 1896 to 13,064 today. Of the first 12 stocks only GE is still in the DJ. When the others go under, dissolve or perform badly they are replaced. Also small caps have a high incidence of going under. If you had put 1 dollar in every small cap stock 80 years ago, you’d have little of your money left.

Major banks now own securities divisions, so I don’t know why they talk down that division. Why listen to your local banker for stock advice when you are supposed to get that from your CPA or dentist. Insurance people often sell their own firm’s mutual funds so I don’t know why they are against them. Can’t trust those insurance guys, selling junk they are against.

I was Accounts VP of PaineWebber (now UBS Finanacial) and we sold stocks, insurance, options, commodities, tax shelters, CDs, tax free bonds, etc. I maintain a handful of brokerage accounts today and bought my first stock over 50 years ago.

Did Penn Central’s growth trend up? What about Pan Am and Eastern Airlines. What about American Home Mortgage filing bankruptcy after being $27 a share just a couple weeks earlier (a month ago), MCI, Enron, and the literally millions of listed companies that have gone bankrupt. If you look at all the money that has been invested and the comparatively few companies that remain today, the market has not been kind. To remove stocks out of the DJ continually to massage the appearance that all stocks have gone up for the past 100 years is deception if used for that representation.
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Reply # 2
Date: Sep 10, 2007 - 9:21 AM EST
Deskjockey
First off mutual funds in their present form have been around since 1822 when the first one was introduced in Belgium. The first mutual fund in the US was actualy introduced in 1893 I think. A friend who is a broker said he hasn't seen anything that he can specifically point to saying what the overall historical performance of funds is but says that Small Caps have performed at or above 12% average returns for at least the past 80 years. He also said they tend to reflect the performance of funds as a whole but not well enough to use as a yardstick. He did say that bankers were notorious for downplaying the mutual fund and stock investment option because they have a vested interest in selling CD's and savings accounts. The other people to look out for according to him are life insurance salesmen because they want to sell you an investment that isn't an investment. The only exception to that rule were people who sold term insurance only and he said to be leary of them as well. You don't happen to belong to any of those groups do you?
I don't agree that all growth is temporary. Growth isn't consistent in the short term but in the long term is pretty steady and always trends upward.
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