What I learned on my Summer Vacation

This week I packed up the family and went north. We went on vacation to Toronto and Niagra Falls. We experienced the normal family vacation things. The kids whined, the wife spent and spent and spent, and I sweated (yes the first part of the week was very hot).

It has been eight years since my wife and I have been to Canada. It is a nice place to visit, if you have a lot of money. The unfavorable exchange rate (2.5 cents when we got there) makes it very hard to make ends meet since the cost of living, at least in the areas we were is much higher than in Ohio. It always was, but in the past the favorable exchange rate made it easier to tolerate.

Along the way we nearly got to experience the health care system that many of our politicians want to give us. On Tuesday my daughter fell on her wrist and was in great pain. I asked at the front desk of the hotel about where to go for health care. They told me there were several clinics nearby but if an x-ray was needed we could only go to hospital. He warned me that since I was from the US I would have to pay cash which I expected, but also that the standard wait in the emergency room was about 4 - 8 hours. That I also expected. In our good fortune there was a man checking in that had some experience with emergency first aid and took a look at her and assured us it was only a sprain and with some ice and Motrin would be fine soon. He was correct and two days later she didn't feel it at all.

Contrast that with what would happen here . Of course someone out of the country would still have to pay cash, but here they would be able to go to an urgent care center, there are several in our vicinity. This would make it much cheaper than going to a hospital. Whether at an urgent care or at the hospital the wait at the worst is going to be 2 - 3 hours. This experience backs up what I believe will happen if we let the socialistic politicians carry the day.

Lets look into the future a bit. If the Dem's win and pass a national health care initiative I believe it will be much like Canada's. Everyone will gave a basic health care package. Beyond that private employers can and will provide more. You can bet the employers that are not providing care today will not be providing care then. The government provided plan will put price caps on drugs, which will mean of course that the older drugs will be provided with no problems, but any new drugs that will save lives but are expensive will not be available to this plan. The net effect will be that the wealthy and middle class will still be getting much better care than the poor. This of course will be a rallying cry for the class warriors and they will work on making the government plan more and more inclusive. For that to happen more and more will have to come out in taxes. This will cause less and less businesses to expand here, to move here and to in source here. Our economy will slowly shrink and become much closer to socialism that it is not.

Don't let Michael Moore fool you. National Health care is not the way.