Unhealthy Combination
How government and medicine don't mix.
by Mark Milke
6/2/2007 12:02:00 AM, Volume 012, Issue 37

The Cure
How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care
by Dr. David Gratzer
Encounter, 240 pp., $25.95

For four decades, politicians from Wilbur Mills (the sixties-era chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who championed Medicare and Medicaid) to George W. Bush either unapologetically used command-and-control economics in health care (Mills) or rhetorically championed market solutions only to preside over an expansion of taxpayer-financed versions (Bush and drug coverage). Now, given a Democratic-controlled Congress, the political temptation to intervene will likely only grow. For some, the appeal of intervention exists because Canada and Europe seemingly provide universal coverage at a lower percentage of Gross Domestic Product, though that ignores whether their expenditures are effective, or are enough. In The Cure Gratzer cautions Americans to avoid those models, as they have their own warts. On Canada, for example, the Winnipeg-born-and-trained physician, who now practices in Toronto and New York, has observed our two systems in detail--and the medical system lauded by the Dean-Clinton-Pelosi axis doesn't look so healthy under his microscope. In Canada, Soviet-style queues are the norm. The physician himself encountered horror stories familiar to any mildly informed Canadian: a middle-aged man with sleep problems booked to see a specialist--in three years; another patient with pain following a simple hernia repair referred to a pain ...