Arguing long wait times need not be the natural consequence of public health care, a new e-book by the Fraser Institute points out France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have managed to maintain relatively lineup-free health-care systems — all while spending less money.
Higher health-care spending “does not necessarily result in more timely access to health-care services,” writes Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute’s director of health policy studies.
Instead, Mr. Esmail says the solution is to build “market-based policies” into the system.
Among them, paying specialists with fees for service, instead of salaries, to promote competition and introducing co-payments to encourage “patients to consider the costs associated with the demands they are making on the health-care system.”
Most importantly, he notes, countries with shorter waiting times fund their health care through social insurance systems or subsidized private institutions, rather than tax-financed, government-run systems.
The effect is to “depoliticize” health care delivery, writes Mr. Esmail.
As “long as money follows the patient through the system,” wait times have a way of working themselves out to their “optimal level.”
Some of the longest waits for medical treatment in the developed world
The wild cards, however, are Austria, the Czech Republic, and Greece. These countries introduced a “market-based set of health-care policies,” but are still reporting problems with wait times
Mr. Esmail suggests “additional factors” may be at play in the complex math of figuring out health-care delivery.
These findings are contained in Reducing Wait Times for Health Care, a 168-page book by the Fraser Institute, which includes essays on how Canada can retool its health-care system to reduce wait times.
According to the institute’s latest annual survey on wait times across Canada, the average Canadian must wait 17.7 weeks for surgery.
“Some of the longest waits for medical treatment in the developed world,” Mr. Esmail says.
Other essays attempt to itemize the damage done to the Canadian economy as a result of the delays, while an entire chapter argues for the implementation of private-payment health care
“It’s one thing to advocate that the government subsidize people’s health care … it’s quite another to advocate that people who are dissatisfied with the current system not be allowed to spend their own money to try to do better,” writes David R. Henderson, a senior fellow at the institute.
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