Bad news for Canadians turns out to be great news for our facility. All you need to read in this article is the title but the entire article is a devastating critique of the Canadian health care system. The answer to the question, “what happens to a national health care system over time that is promoted as ‘free’,” is found in the article. Could it be that demand dwarfs supply? Could it be that the government rations care in order to stay solvent? This rationing ploy amounts to the same thing as a bankrupt company that takes longer and longer to pay its bills, eventually not paying them at all.
Calls to our facility from Canadian patients have picked up recently. This trend looks likely to continue if the authors of this article are correct. I like to think of our facility and our transparent and packaged pricing as a surgical lifeboat for people. There are so many stories now of people who have had life changing surgeries at our facility that they would not have been able to afford, had our facility not been there for them. This includes Canadians and many uninsured from here in Oklahoma and from many other states. I also like to think sometimes of the money that we have kept people from spending on health care, Bastiat’s “what is not seen” concept I’ve written about before. The $10,000 difference between the price for a hernia repair at our facility, and at a local not-for-profit hospital is a significant amount of money by itself, but a gigantic amount when multiplied by the number of patients that have benefited from our pricing.
The lesson of single-payor, universal health care just to the north should have been heeded here, but the power-hungry health care gangsters are determined to implement that failed system here, it seems. An Associated Press article recently made the case for investing in the Canadian stock market. I think a better investment might be in the airlines that will carry sick and injured Canadians to Oklahoma City for care for which they will be more and more willing to pay.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
