For those countries, such as Canada and Britain, that have universal healthcare, what do think is going to happen to their system if the government becomes insolvent? People will have to turn to the black markets for care? Government will give up and privatize the system?
Last I heard Canada was already privatizing the health care system, or at least had eliminated the monopoly over health care.
Stranger, I’ll take a risk and without researching and assume that whatever Canada has done or is partially doing, isn’t privatizing in the true sense of the word, that is, surrendering all (or at least most) control over healthcare and turning it over to private ownership.
If this is the case, why are you playing right into the hands of the enemies and calling it privatization?
It depends on how much accumulated capital, especially medical infrastructure, is permitted to vanish under the socialized system.
If the insolvency occurs quickly and the government suddenly loses control without spending a lot of time destroying the incentives to become a doctor/manufacture or develop medical equipment/produce medicine, then as the government collapses, all of the things that actually provide health care will still exist and will provide service. Disincentives will disappear and growth will resume.
If, on the other hand, the government becomes insolvent over the course of many years, all the while leeching off of accumulated capital, then what’s left when the whole system finally crumbles will be much less.
For instance, imagine that the average doctor works for forty years and there is significant inertia–that is, worsening conditions affect the number of people becoming doctors strongly but people who are already doctors generally remain in medicine. After some period of time, the number of doctors will begin to decrease as fewer people enter medical school. If the system manages to hold together long enough, by the time the system collapses, there will not be enough doctors to serve everyone even if they are perfectly free. It will take a significant amount of time for their numbers to grow, since medical training is expensive and time-consuming.
Its a fantastic system really. The governments are slowly realising that by allowing more-private providers, instead of waiting in long lines people will pay out of pocket, and they still get to keep the tax revenue.
Actually I think it was found by the supreme court that the medical care monopoly was a violation of the country’s charter of human rights, so they just had to give up enforcing it.
but in a freer market, you wouldn’t need to have to see a doctor for all problems medical. It would take a lot less time to train people to become nurses or other lesser positions that could probably take care of most people’s basic medical needs. Also, with less regulations and restrictions, it would be easier for doctors from other areas/countries to move to where there is a shortage.
It was actually a Quebec decision, made due to the long waiting lists resulting in deaths, however the decision maintains that if the government could provide health care services they have full right to shut down and ban private providers.
Absolutely. And if, after a collapse, the new system that springs up permits that sort of thing, then the recovery will be much faster.
Doesn’t change the fact that the previously squandered capital will need to be replenished.
When the government takes over things like healthcare, costs will rise. Im from the Netherlands, where we have universal healthcare.
I attended some lectures from a professor who participated in shaping the current healthcare system, and in between the stories of how great such a system is, he calmly mentioned that they expect the total costs of healthcare will exeed the total income of the government by 2020, before continuing his speech on the greatness of the system.
When I asked him what the plan to solve this problem was, he replied that the hospitals will have to cut down on bureacracy… Like that is ever going to happen as long as the government is in charge. Bottom line is that we’ll have to pay hight taxes to receive lower quality healthcare.
In a situation where government becomes insolvent I expect that they have already given up providing healthcare, since this is one of the most expensive things to run for a governement. If competition is allowed, people will turn to the market for care, if not, people might choose to go abroad for healthcare.
It will look something like this
that is true, and sadly will probably result in death. But there should be some savings graces. One being that going into medicine is just as much if not more about a vocation than it is about wanting to make a bunch of money. Meaning that in any given generation, the number of people who will chose to become doctors or at least enter into the medical field would be relatively inelastic in terms of salary and having to jump over barriers of entry, when compared to other professions (just speculation on my part, but it ‘sounds’ right, and doctors more than most other positions that pay well say that they aren’t in it for the money)
And I would think that as the market slowly dries up of new talent and service becomes worse and worse, than inversely, more and more black market ‘doctors’ should pop up on the scene (or under it). Maybe even black market medical schools.
Add all of that to the price signals that would be sent out to doctors across the world if there was a shortage, and the overall damage might turn out to be fairly limited in terms of what would happen post collapse. I would be more worried about pre-collapse times and if the gov’t was (or how hard it was) cracking down on black market medicine.
The only privatizations are illegal. What has been done by some provinces, at least Ontario, is simply taking bids from contractors for running the hospitals.
They definitely stopped enforcing it long ago. There was an episode of John Stossel’s old show showing the president of the CMA running an illegal clinic.
However, the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” is 100% irrelevent. That document does not legally grant anyone rights. What it essentially says it that everyone has x rights until they feel like taking them away for x reasons (and it is clearly worded by design to allow unlimited reasons). What it should really be called is “Charter of Arbitrary Privileges” or “Charter of Absolute Supreme Court Dictatorship” or “Charter of No rights and Freedoms”. Even if it actually did just plain say that everyone has x rights, the “rights” are largely no more rights than what is found in the UN Declaration. But, hey, that’s what you expect from a Prime Minister who said, "“We have a great deal to learn from the Soviet Union”