National insurance could prove disastrous

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), April, 2005

As Sens. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), John Kerry (D.-Mass.), and other prominent supporters of government provision of health care continue to discuss their plans, a study by the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., suggests Democratic Party leaders should steer clear of such schemes. Data from foreign governments with these systems contradict many of the claims made about national health insurance by supporters in the US.

In "Health Care in a Free Society: Rebutting the Myths of National Health Insurance," National Center for Policy Analysis Pres. John C. Goodman writes that, wherever national health insurance has been tried, it produces results at odds with its proponents' promises of equal access to high-quality medical care. In national health care systems, "rationing by waiting is pervasive, putting patients at risk and keeping them in pain," Goodman declares. "Access to health care in single-payer systems is far from equitable; in fact, it often correlates with income," For example:

* No country with national health insurance has established a right to health care, or equal access to care. The elderly in Canada and the United Kingdom report much more difficulty obtaining care than U.S. seniors, while racial health disparities persist. "New Zealand's guidelines for end stage renal failure programs say that age should not be the sole factor in determining eligibility, but that, 'in usual circumstances, people over 75 should not be accepted.' Since New Zealand has no private dialysis facilities, this amounts to a death sentence for elderly patients with kidney failure," relates Goodman.

* The quality of medical care in the U.S. typically is higher than in other nations. America has lower breast and prostate cancer mortality rates than New Zealand, the U.K., Germany, Canada, France, and Australia.

* "Patients in government-run health care systems do not get more preventive care than Americans do. The amount of preventive care people get under single-payer systems seems to be based more on socioeconomic status and education than on whether medical care is free or not," Goodman maintains.

* A comparison of Britain's National Health Service and Kaiser Permanente in California found that Kaiser provides its members with more comprehensive and convenient primary care services and much more rapid access to specialists and hospital admissions for roughly the same cost per capita.

"Advocates of national health insurance would do well to look at how countries like Germany, Sweden, and Australia are choosing free-market reforms to alleviate the problems of their national health systems. Through painful experience, many of the countries that once heralded the benefits of government control have learned that the best remedy for their countries' health care crises is not increasing government power, but increasing patient power instead," concludes Goodman.