From time to time, I’ll see grumbling in the Canadina press over queue-jumping. The elite pro athletes, politicians or the politically-connected, Worker’s Comp for favored employees, etc.

The more spectacular one was Jean Chrétien, who went to Mayo for medical care, and was outed when he was needed to attend King Hussein’s funeral and couldn’t be found. Certainly don’t begrudge him for wanting treatment at Mayo, but he had to lie about it.

One of the few things that keeps me in medicine is the hope that a well run practice may find success in a niche business such as cash only. If the government regulates that hope away, then I’ll cut my losses and get out of medicine as fast as possible.

i would still have to assume that without some assistance in the drawbacks of being a physician in america, the percentage of physicians that would quit under such a system would be greater here. my impression is that medical education is more costly in america, the legal climate is far worse, and patients have a worse attitude.

if all of those things were to remain the same and we were to adopt “the canadian system”… why not move to canada and practice there, where i’m working under the same conditions but less likely to be sued?

if implementation of such a system were to result in worse outcomes, you can be sure the physicians will be held responsible by the patients and their lawyers.

I have a problem with how you framed this — it feels fundamentally dishonest. You lead with, “One scenario envisioned by health reformists is to prohibit doctors from practicing outside a government-run system.” Now I confess that I could not read the original post at Covert Rationing, as something seems to be jamming my interwebs just now, but I am not aware of ANY health reformers who advocate such a system. Absent a concrete example of this “scenario,” your lede might be more accurately phrased as: “Those skeptical of health care reform are afraid of a scenario in which doctors are prohibited from practicing outside of a government-run system.”

But you falsely imply that such a proposal is being advocated by reformers. That is simply fear-mongering. If you can cite an example of such an advocate, meaning a pro-reform health policy wonk with more credibility than me, please do so. Even so, you would do well to clarify for your readers that the nightmare scenario alluded to is not endorsed by any one of the democratic leaders who are working on health care reform.

Really, I get tired of the regressives whipping up a frenzy of opposition to the NHS and CanadaCare when neither is under consideration in the US. Geez. Get with it, people.

Re Anonymous (10:31 pm). Wrongo. There’s no real private practice option in Canada. (I’m a Canadian and know what I’m talking about). Yes, technically it’s true, a physician can opt out of the system and run a private practice. But in Canada the choice is to be entirely in or entirely out of the system, and “entirely out” means effectively “no patients”. So virtually every physician is in the system.

you’d be left with no doctors.