Canada under attack

Canada's health care system came under attack in Las Vegas this afternoon at the Health Care Globalization Summit.

Sally Pipes, a Canadian researcher and writer who has long been a critic of health care in Canada, said the system is expensive and leads to long waiting lists.

"We have rationed care. We are told that at a certain age there are some procedures you can't get," she told the conference. She relayed the story of her aging mother, who was told she was too old to get an MRI. "This is not the kind of care Americans want," she said.

She was also sharply critical of the health care plans of the two Democratic presidential candidates, saying both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are proposing plans for universal care that will one day lead to Canadian-style single-payer (ie, government) medicine.

"I think they are a slow creep down the road to socialized medicine." And that, by implication, is a bad thing. Canada's medicare system has its defenders, but not at this conference of health industry executives and entrepreneur doctors.

Pipes also said there are many misconceptions about U.S. health care and the more than 40 million Americans without insurance. It is not true, she said, that such people have no access to care.

"No one is denied health care," she said. "You can show up at the emergency room, a community hospital or a clinic."

She pointed out that far from being dominated by private insurance, 51 per cent of health care costs in the U.S. are covered by government through Medicare, Medicaid and care for military veterans.

"Now politicians are trying to grab the other 49 per cent," she said, referring to Obama and Clinton.

Session chair Henry Dreifus urged all eligible voters in the room to ensure they turn out for November's presidential election, saying "We need all the votes we can get" to head off the Democrats and their plans for medicare.