Cattle Call

A lefty tells Canada to go jump in a Lakoff: Expect other nations to be touted in the future as models for us to emulate where paying for medical care is concerned.

Ew! Canada!

Froma Harrop, who agrees with me that the socialist left and the religious right are natural allies, but is, sadly, short-sighted enough to want such an alliance to form, has put in her two cents' worth on the medical care debate now that Canada's Supreme Court has put the constitutionality of that whole system into doubt.

An inveterate fan of government intervention, Harrop has written a column that offers very little of substance, but reveals new tactical directions the left might take as they wind up to make another pitch for state control of your health. I'll do a brief rundown.

For the love of God, tout some other nation besides Canada as a model for the United States to aspire to!

That's pretty much all she says. How she says it and how what she does resembles what other socialists -- er liberals, um progressives, oh, whatever the hell they're calling themselves at the moment -- are doing is the real take-home message.

A Short Fisking

Now the fisking can begin in earnest.

Most every uninformed debate on health care in the United States has its Canadian moment.

Only an "uninformed" dolt would consider Canada's (Of all places, really!) a good example of a universal health care system anyway. And with this slap in the face, Harrop is hoping not only to make her readers too embarrassed to ever bring up Canada in a health care debate again, she is hoping they'll be too stunned to remember that it was the liberals who kept heralding Canada as some sort of a medical paradise in the first place.

The Canadian Norwegian French Model

Cox and Forkum, inspired by a fly-by-night outfit known to some as The Wall Street Journal, indulge in a little "Canadian moment" of their own. Quoth the WSJ: "The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune from the laws of economics. Politicians can't wave a wand and provide equal coverage for all merely by declaring medical care to be a 'right,' in the word that is currently popular on the American left." But now, thanks to Froma Harrop, we all know the answer to that one! "That was Canada!" The cartooning duo were also picked up by Investor's Business Daily who, apparently, hadn't yet gotten word that Ms. Harrop had declared the whole subject of Canada off-limits. My benighted congratulations go to both!

I'll grant that in one instance, she is right about uninformed discussions of medical care having their "Canadian moments": Her column begins with one of its own!

We don't want the Canadian way of delivering medical services. But that doesn't mean we don't want universal coverage. Nearly every industrialized country guarantees health coverage for all without the shortcomings of the Canadian system.

Harrop then attempts to make a straw man out of conservative arguments against socialized medicine, pretending that the Canadian implementation of "universal access" is what's at fault, rather than the idea itself. This is old hat. Liberals saw countless examples of communism failing and never got remotely close to the realization that maybe communism itself is flawed and that the practical consequences of communism include repression and economic collapse.

At this point, I am reminded of a quote from the other Harrop piece I linked to above that goes a long way in explaining the inability of those on the left to evaluate their ideas objectively. "Liberals have long admired religious conservatives for their willingness to place moral principles above a quick buck." Liberals (and religionists) see the moral and the practical as two completely separate questions. (In that essay, "getting results" for Harrop means, essentially, acquiring political power so schemes like socialized medicine can be implemented.) This explains both the dismissal of Canada as an example of a universal care system and the fanatical devotion to the idea that we must subsidize everyone's medical care.

Like it or not, Canadians already have a two-tier health system. The second tier happens to be in the United States. Zeliotis could have gone to Detroit and had his hip replaced for something in the neighborhood of $35,000. He couldn't afford it. But affluent Canadians can and do avail themselves of American medicine.

For now, just note whose system Harrop admits is Canada's "safety valve."

Canada spends more on health care than any other industrialized country with universal coverage, but it doesn't get great results, according to a Fraser Institute study. The World Health Organization ranks Canada's health-care system 30th in the world. The No. 1 system is France's, which allows private medical services to augment its public program.

France is "No. 1?" By what standard? Does WHO factor in "accessibility" as part of its standard? Depending on how that is measured, the contest would almost certainly be rigged against the United States, making the rankings nothing but a propaganda tool for advocates of some form of socialized medicine. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why Canada (#30 on the charts) uses the United States (#37, cited much later in the article.) as its "second tier." But I suppose making such a boorish direct comparison would be another one of those "uninformed" "Canadian moments." How daft I can be sometimes!

It might also be enlightening to recall another quote about France and Canada from a meatier article by two other "progressives" advocating "universal" health care that I blogged on recently.

Sure, a compelling case can be made that the Canadian or French system serves those countries' citizens better than the American system does ours. But an equally compelling case can be made that we'd be better off with an extra dollar-per-gallon tax on gasoline. These are, in the end, liberal sugarplum visions.

Are these authors conceding that France and Canada are both not as good as our system? Do they claim that France is better, like Canada? (And if so, do they really need that medical marijuana they've been smoking?) Or are they nitpicking on the meaning of "or" to hedge their bets? None of these three authors makes much of a case, relying on authority to claim that America, magnet for the world's sick, is somehow not the leader in medicine. Who cares what WHO says?

Like the other progressives, though, Harrop knows that she has to assure Americans that some remnant of capitalism will remain to save their (Canadian?) bacon when it becomes apparent that the "universal access" is to chronic shortages and long lines rather than decent medical care. This seems to have been the only lesson learned by the left from the defeat of Hilarycare: "Make it sound less like socialism."

Some health-care systems permit a great deal of free-market competition while ensuring universal coverage. Norway's program, which ranks 11th in the world, has an extensive network of supplementary care. Private clinics there do open-heart, hip and other surgeries that may require a long wait in the public system.

And this begs the question: "What's so good about 'universal' access to care if vital procedures can't be had in the public system quickly enough?" You never get an answer to this question from the advocates of socialized medicine. Instead, you have to wait (!) until a Canadian court tells a provincial government to allow private health insurance or make the "public system" deliver. Oh! But there I go again, having a "Canadian moment!" How "uninformed" of me!

The American debate often skips past the reality that, like the French, we already offer a mix of public and private health care. U.S. taxpayers provide health insurance for select groups -- Medicare serving the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. What makes us different from France is that we don't cover everybody, we spend a ton more per-capita on health services and we sit 37th in world rankings.

If the American debate does indeed omit "the reality that, like the French, we already offer a mix of public and private health care," it is time to change that. It is this mixture of freedom and controls -- of medicine and poison -- that is the problem. (Hint: more poison is the wrong answer.) Government interference at all levels is ruining our private system. For example, the malpractice crisis increases costs by forcing doctors to either pay huge malpractice insurance premiums or quit their profession, and by causing lots of expensive "defensive medicine," such as batteries of unnecessary tests to eliminate misdiagnoses -- to the satisfaction of a lawyer rather than to the objective requirements of a doctor with common sense. Government interventions intended to reduce prices result in artificially increased demand and then either shortages or higher prices since the supply of medical care is limited.

And note the answer to the question I had above about whether "access" factors into the WHO rankings: "What makes us different from France is that we don't cover everybody, we spend a ton more per-capita on health services and we sit 37th in world rankings." Harrop makes it sound like "accessibility" is part of the WHO's ranking system. See my blog entry linked above for how attempts to decree universal access to medicine play out. The principle is the same whether the government takes over the medical industry outright or masks this takeover behind a quasicapitalist facade.

Other models, on other continents, are definitely worth a look.

As I already stated above: "We can't use Canada to sell socialized medicine anymore."

Admittedly, I am using "socialized medicine" rather loosely here to include fascist systems like that proposed by Emanuel and Fuchs and mixed economy measures like the French universal coverage system, but.... The common denominator behind all systems that attempt universal coverage is that, at some point, government force is used to take money from some to pay for the medical expenses of others. The effects of such actions are predictable and do not depend on the exact details of the system. This is what the liberals are hoping no one notices when they pitch health care vouchers like Emanuel and Fuchs or Harrop's French crazyquilt of a plan.

Is Dr. Lakoff here to "take care of you"?

What I find interesting here when comparing Froma Harrop's article to that of Emanuel and Fuchs is that both are selling basically the same thing as the Clintons tried in 1994, but with a few capitalist trimmings. Harrop hopes that not mentioning Canada will help voters forget what they learned in '94, and that a not-quite-fully socialized system will "sell" better. Emanuel and Fuchs likewise are more modulating their sales pitch than offering different goods to the public.

If progressives want to use this moment to achieve universal health care, they will need to put forward a proposal that makes the most of what's good about the current system and reflects America's basic values.

Both of these approaches resemble nothing if they don't resemble the one advocated by George Lakoff shortly after the Democrats lost the 2004 elections. Basically he says to, "Make your old ideas more appealing to voters by 'speaking like an American.'" Perhaps this is giving too much credit to Lakoff as the idea is not really that original. Only its pseudoscientific packaging is.

So, like a failing business that is more worried about ad campaigns than product quality, the left is looking for a new model to star in its upcoming blitz. So far, the frontrunner appears to be France.

But it's universal coverage as a goal that should be scuttled, rather than Canada as an example of the consequences of universal coverage.

-- CAV

Updates

6-16-05: (1) Changed some wording. (2) Added Cox and Forkum image and link. (3) Crossposted to the Egosphere.