For those who are dissatisfied with the amount of medical insurance provided by the Province of Ontario, we would suggest that a glance at both Saskatchewan and Great Britain would be wise.
Saskatchewan, which pioneered hospital insurance in Canada, is now suffering from the two more obvious evils of this system, and is beginning to realize that the worst is yet to come.
Already hospitals in this province are crowded to the roof tops and the situation grows daily worse. Dr. C. E. Baryon, Executive Director of the Regina General Hospital said recently: "A doctor may rule a patient no longer needs hospitalization, but some patients insist on staying. Quite a number of people, especially elderly patients, just sit on your doorstep. This situation didn't exist to this extent in the past; people accepted responsibility."
Further bad news from Saskatchewan residents on the hospital insurance front comes in form of an announcement from the Government that hospital insurance rates are to be boosted from $17 to $24 for a single person, and from $35 to $48 for a family group in 1961. Even ardent supporters of Premier Douglas are beginning to wonder whether, with state medical insurance costs piled on top of the steadily rising hospital insurance costs, the socialist Government of Saskatchewan hasn't bitten off more than it can chew.
Enlarging upon the woes of socialized medicine, Letter-Review says: "From the authoritative British Medical Journal comes the disquieting news that UK doctors operated on the wrong limbs of no fewer than nine patients last year. Says Dr. Philip Addison, secretary of the Medical Defense Union:
"It is hardly necessary to say that cases of this sort are quite indefensible... The council of the Medical Defense Union is becoming increasingly perturbed by the number of occasions on which it is confronted with a patient's claim for compensation after an operation was performed on the wrong limb or digit.
"No explanation for the action of the doctors who amputate the wrong leg, or arm or finger, is given, other than physicians, like ordinary people, have some trouble distinguishing right from left. Possible explanation is that doctors working under socialized medicine in the UK are so overworked and underpaid that they make more mistakes than they would otherwise. Such mistakes are no laughing matter for the victims."
The overcrowding of hospitals, higher taxation and the overworking of doctors seem to follow in the wake of socialized medicine wherever it is introduced. And with these things aggravating them, is the inevitable growth in the number of hypochondriacs and hospital-happy people who haunt the reception rooms of doctors and the wards of hospitals.
Better by far is the present system whereby people buy their own insurance according to their probable needs; with government provision made there is provision for the needy sick.