Editing 79-10-A6 (section)

=== Transcript ===
From time to time on these commentaries I've taken issue with the advocates of
nationalized health insurance which is the title used for compulsory socialized medicine.
Some time ago I called attention to Senator Kennedy's attempt to use Canada's national
health plan as proof that such plans are better than our own pluralistic system.

Now with two plans for government health care, the Senator's and the President's
up for consideration by the Congress, some further information about the Canadian
plan might be in order.

In 1953 the province of Manitoba suffered the worst epidemic of polio to ever
hit any part of the North American continent. Polio, of course, is a catastrophic
illness and an epidemic, such as struck Manitoba, left some families totally destitute.
There was no denying the need for some kind of community help for catastrophic cases.

Manitoba until 1969 had a fairly successful medical insurance plan run entirely
by the medical profession. It offered unlimited medical and surgical care, laboratory
tests, X-rays, drugs, ambulance service, nursing care and physical check-ups. And of
course, free choice of doctors. It covered 65 percent of the population.

In 1969 this plan was ordered disbanded by the government of Canada which had
introduced a program of compulsory, universal care. F.S. Manor, writing in the
AMERICAN SPECTATOR, describes in detail what happened then. He calls the government
program a conveyor-belt system administered through community clinics. These clinics
consist of "all powerful administrators, social workers, paramedics and a small number
of salaried doctors doing shift work and restricted in the number of X-rays or
laboratory tests they can order per day." And believe it or not, the doctors are
low men on that medical totem pole.

You arrive at the clinic as a patient. You are assigned to a social worker who
determines whether you really need medical care or if it is all in your head. If
the decision is that you probably do have some ailment you are turned over to a
paramedic. This individual decides whether it's something he or she can treat or
whether you should see a doctor. If you do see a doctor he or she diagnoses your
case and makes an appointment for treatment. But treatment may be by a doctor you've
never seen before because your appointment happens to fall on his or her shift.

Now obviously this whole procedure is backward. Your first interview should be
with a trained doctor who decides whether you need a doctor's care, whether a paramedic
can handle your case or whether you just need to be talked to by a social worker.
The system is backward because it's cheaper that way. The top men on the totem pole --
the administrators -- have ruled that the conveyor-belt will run backwards. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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