A Short Course in Brain Surgery highlights the plight of an Ontario man with a cancerous brain tumor who crossed the border to the U.S. to get the medical care that is rationed in his home country.

http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php

Barbara

A very painful story. I fear it is an indication of what we can "look forward" to in the USA in the moderate term future.

Bill P (Alfonso)

It be wonderful if someone could show Hillary and Barak this video and ask their comments.

Don't forget that Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski has also treated brain tumors, albeit not with surgery or radiation, but with antineoplastons. That would be another reason to cross the border.

Not sure what is meant by "free market" medicine. In the US you have health insurance just like in Canada, but it's not nationalized. Both countries have problems with their healthcare system that need to be addressed, making it into a philosophical issue doesn't really help solve the problems.

It isn't a philosophical issue, generally speaking, and that's why there is a problem.

Third party payers are a big part of this problem, but the private insurers merely follow in the Federal Medicaid/Medicare wake, plus there is the overall problem of government regulation of medicine which throtles research and innovation and medical practice.

Medicare has de facto nationalized medicne in the U.S.

Free market medicine means no government involvemnt in medicine, even licensing of doctors. That's a practically achievable ideal, albeit one that would take generations to do without hurting a lot of people.

Your antipathy to philosophy means you are in Rome but not a Roman. In fact, you don't care about Rome--you don't see the point of Rome or Roman issues, which you keep telling us.

--Brant

I think the problem will be solved with 2-tiered medicine, as they call it here. It's already happening whether the government likes it or not. So if you can afford it you can make your own arrangements for healthcare and if not you get the 2nd rate government healthcare.

Remember the major study that would save Health Care during Chretien's term? How it said we would have a first rate medical system if we cut all the needless waste built into the system?

Funny how govt employees never mention that report these days.

I agree with GS, this problem doesn't need to be brought into abstract philosophy to be fixed. America's or Canada's.

IMO, the biggest problem with healthcare in Canada and US is the focus on disease instead of health. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and we are spending most of our money on the cure part. It's gotten to the point with me where I wouldn't go to a doctor or hospital unless someone carried me there - I am doing everything in my power to stay healthy. The growth of alternative medicine and herbal and vitamin supplements is indicative of an increased awareness of the shortcomings of modern medicine. See http://www.doctoryourself.com/index.html

Most of the money is being spent on the elderly. Too late for most of them the disease/health model. To live into old age in relatively good health requires a change in medical focus too radical to be accomplished without a free market in medicine and you won't get there without philosophy, if only libertarian political/economic philosophy.

You guys come to a philosophical list to tell list members the unimportance of philosophy, usually in an ad hoc way. Everybody has a philosophy, usually an unconscious mish-mash, which constitutes the mind's operating system. The purpose of a philosophical list is to make the unconscious conscious as the basic means of dealing with ideas through philosophical consistency and rationality. Humans are the only known animals who need philosophy, who need to be rational, who need to use cognition and use it correctly.

--Brant

According to the Wiki we already spend 160 billion per year on Health Care but apparently obesity rates are costing us at least 10 billion per year (source). In Britain estimates are that by 2050 obesity will cost 90 billion (source). In America obesity cost the health care system 117 billion in a single year (source).

Then there are costs related to smoking addiction etc....

I agree with GS on this 100%

Like I said. What's funny is the implicit collectivist premise popping to the surface when philosophy is riven out of the discussion. One calls for state action or one calls for the state to get out of the way. There is no middle ground. How do "we" get what GS or Mike11 want? Which new directives out of Washington do "we" need? Decades ago Nixon declared a war on cancer. Now the President should declare a war on fat?

--Brant

I am not familiar with the term 'collectivism' but from wikipedia "Collectivism is a term used to describe any moral, political, or social outlook, that stresses human interdependence and the importance of a collective, rather than the importance of separate individuals". In my mind humans are interdependent and have goals that can only be achieved in groups or collectives, unless we want to live like wild animals. In fact, I can't think of any species that are not interdependent to some extent. So to me the question is not whether or not healthcare should be private or public, it is what is the best way to deliver it? Etc.

PS. look at the URL of the site in the original post, freemarketcure.com, that's a joke to me. It implies that "free markets" are going to solve all our health problems? I don't think so.

Nixon et al didn't know that around 75% of cancers are diet/life style related, maybe higher. If one wants to fight cancer one needs to look at what we are putting in our bodies first. Again, the primary emphasis should be on prevention and a lot less on the "cure".

You don't know this either. Aside from smoking, you will have a hard time defending this.

Because of Nixon the government has poured billions into cancer research, most of it wasted. What does it matter what he knew? He wasn't a cancer researcher. Your arrogance in allotting money for prevention over cure is the same as his (and Congress) for allotting cure over prevention. When the government does the allotting it's like the government is doing the actual research. It matters little that the bureaucrats are much dumber than the scientists they fund; the scientists know that if they want the grant money they'll have to kowtow to their inferiors, which makes them in turn the inferiors.

--Brant

I can see why my use of govt spending stats on obesity would make you think I favour a govt solution. That wasn't what I was trying to communicate. What I was trying to say is whether the system is private, public, or somewhere in between there are going to be common practical problems both will have to face. Dealing with issues that are based on consumers living foolishly may give rise to medical problems in the developed world as big as those caused by factors outside of one's immediate control.

GS advocated seeing one's health as your own responsibility, at least in practicing prevention if not in the cure. The use of personal virtue in maintaining one's health is what I was agreeing with primarily. In doing so you also make whatever system you're in more efficient. A society that uses a mixed economy and who's citizens don't smoke, drink and are physically fit will have a healthier population than a Galt's Gulch with a population of Homer Simpsons'.

As for this whole question of philosophy and health care, this thread started with a a story highlighting a problem with Canada's health care - a practical problem - that can be solved with practical reform. If you want to argue that only a free market system is moral go right ahead, I'll agree with you, but the practical successes and failures of the system are practical not philosophical issues.

I think it's quite telling that according to Objectivism, one's life is the standard of value, but protecting that life via healthcare and taxes could NEVER be a valid function of government, but protection against enemies is just fine. That makes no sense to me. Cancer is every bit of a threat that a bullet is.

I think it just says that the bottom line is freedom, not life. And hey, that's cool, but why not just say freedom and not pretend it's life that matters most? I think I know the answer to that too...

Bob

Can't argue with personal responsibility. Your practical issues stance works in a practical context to the extent that context permits. But the (correct) philosophical as the practical maxes out the broadening of the context. Today's practical issues, however, have been often created by incorrect philosophy.

--Brant

I'm curious just how you can have a money-making business out of preventative healthcare. There is plenty of money to be made providing "cures", just look at big Pharma. The problem with "free-market" philosophy is that it doesn't take into account greed and often ends up in outright dishonesty etc.

I make money this way.

Quite easily. The gum, the patch, weight watchers, Diet (whatever) flavored (whatever), books, gyms, all natural (whatever), organic (whatever)....

Most of those show the value of "healthy" branding. Micci D's could announce healthy sausages (you know, the ones that you can wipe off with 10 of their paper towels and there's still grease coming off?) and they'd sell 400% more of them.

Ah, greed. Dishonesty. You seem to know nothing of self-correcting, feedback mechanisms. Tell me, what are some virtues of the free market? I'd start with the luxury of greed as opposed to the desperation of artificial scarcities.

--Brant

I observe the Whole Foods seems to alway be crowded whenever I visit it. They are offer healthy stuff.