Obama, before running for president, when he could be more candid, favored a Canadian-style single-payer, government-run health care system. Now, he's pulled back--at least until he's elected.He might want to check on how the Canadian system is working. A new article reports that the chair of the committee that created Canada's single-payer system now says that the system has such serious deficiencies that no rationing of care or mass infusion of tax dollars can solve the problem. He now advocates replacing the system with a private one in which people have more choice. Another article presents another of those nightmare anecdotes in which a patient reports that the Canadian system is so overwhelmed that she couldn't get off the months-long waiting list even though she was losing her sight. And the average wait time to see a specialist is 18 weeks.
And that's in a country that is much easier to provide health care for than the U.S., which has many millions of new immigrants with extraordinary health care needs but with little money to pay into the system.
