Commentary
Canadians are proud of their universal health-care system. Politicians hold it up as proof of our compassion, while unions fight to preserve it and judges unfailingly defend it. But pride and rhetoric can’t mask reality: Canada spends more on health care than almost any other country in the world and delivers some of the worst results. Our hospitals are overloaded, wait times are intolerable, and tens of thousands of patients die each year before receiving the treatment they need.
Consider just two heartbreaking stories. Last year, 16-year-old Finlay van der Werken of Burlington, Ont., spent eight fruitless hours in a local emergency room crying out in pain from sepsis and pneumonia before being sent to hospital in Toronto. By then it was too late. His parents faced the unimaginable: taking their son off life support. In another case known to me personally, the 8-year-old daughter of a carpenter doing some work for us endured agonizing pain from noon until nearly midnight before finally receiving treatment for severe injuries. She survived, at least….