Scratch Another "Progressive" Shangri-La

For decades now "progressives" have been regaling us with tales of Europe. It used to be that pointing to "Europe" was the default position whenever Canadian socialist utopians got backed into a corner. "In England you know, they ... ," was the response whenever unions, over-taxation, and above all, healthcare, were debated. Sometimes you'd think Swedes or Dutch were little blond angels sent down from NDP heaven just to show the rest of us in Canuckland how it's supposed to be done. Ah, the good'ol days.

So it is, that "progressive" Shangri-La now uses ambulances as waiting rooms outside emergency units and in some countries wait-times rival Saskatchewan's. When it comes to short wait times and socialized medicine, "progressives" in Canada are running out of examples to point to.

Personally, I'm not for a strictly user pay system, but neither am I for the government-only system of equal-no-access in Canada. Now that Europe has fallen off the list of wonderful, perfect, pure and delicious "progressive" healthcare examples, Canadians may actually be willing to search for creative multifaceted solutions (not to mention Europe's immigration dissaster):

Here's a goodie from England:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

Doctors warned last night that the practice of "patient-stacking" was putting patients' health at risk.

Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that last year 43,576 patients waited longer than one hour before being let into emergency units.

Only seven out of 11 ambulance trusts responded to the survey, so the true figure could be far higher.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb is writing to health secretary Alan Johnson to demand an urgent investigation into the practice.

"This is evidence of shocking systematic failure in our emergency services," he said.
Labour brought in the four-hour A&E target to end the scandal of patients waiting for days in casualty or being kept on trolleys in corridors.

And from Sweden:

Waiting times for medical care in Sweden are the longest in Europe, according to the Health Consumer Powerhouse, which analyzes health-care systems in the region. About 33,000 people had been waiting more than three months for surgery or other major treatments at the end of August, an increase of 43 percent from May, a report by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions showed.

Critics of Sweden's welfare model say there are no incentives for hospitals to improve efficiency. Oscar Hjertqvist, director of the Health Consumer Powerhouse, likens the current system to a bad restaurant getting government funding.

Oh my ... sounds a lot like Canada to me. At least Swedes have the "legal" option of choosing private care.

ht