The criticism of single-payer health care -- primarily as practiced in Canada and Europe -- has been that operations and procedures are long-delayed or denied and health care is rationed to control costs. For example:
- In Canada, the average wait for a 65-year-old man to get a hip replacement is six months, according to the Freedom Works Foundation.
- The average wait time in a Canadian emergency room is 16 hours and 18 minutes.
- Also, the average cancer test and radiation treatment cycles vary between 6 to 8 weeks, according to the foundation.
- In Great Britain, at any one time, there are about a million people waiting to get into hospitals.
- Almost 900,000 Canadian patients are on the waiting list at any point in time, according to the Fraser Institute.
- In New Zealand, 90,000 people are on the waiting lists, according to government figures.
"Many of the people waiting are waiting in pain. Many are risking their lives by waiting. And there is no market mechanism in these countries to get care to people who need it first."
Obama and most Democrats in Congress are pushing for a "public option," or government-run health insurance program that would compete with private health care companies. Many analysts agree that the private, market-driven companies will be unable to compete with a government-run insurance program, which would have nearly unlimited resources...
[Obama has said he expects these fist steps to eventually result in only a government run single-payer system "fifteen, maybe twenty years out". We're being sold a bill of goods.]
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