(2003-10-21) Canadian Healthcare Control

SallyPipes on Canadian HealthCare trade-offs. The fact critics of U.S. health care miss in this cross border trade is that while Americans travel to the drug Costco of the north to hunt for bargains, Canadians travel here not because it costs more in Canada but because the government there - with its drug price controls and restrictions on access to new technology - won't let them get the tests, treatments and medications they need to make their lives worth living. Indeed, Canadians' months-long waits for diagnostic tests and yearlong waits for approval of new medications and surgeries demonstrate that health care woes cannot be solved by government takeover, especially one that prohibits private alternatives... Cccording to research by Columbia University professor Frank Lichtenberg, every $1 of increased spending on new pharmaceuticals (PharmCo) reduces other health care expenditures by an average of $7.17.