The good people of Colorado must be smoking something these days.
That’s the only explanation for the decision by 156,000 of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters to endorse a November ballot initiative that would create a statewide single-payer health care system.
Patients in single-payer systems elsewhere must withstand low-quality care and long wait times. To fund all that failure, they pay sky-high taxes. If Colorado’s voters approve this single-payer measure at the polls this fall, they’ll experience these realities firsthand.
Single-payer systems control costs by using government power to ration care.
In Canada, where I grew up, patients have to wait four-and-a-half months, on average, to receive treatment from a specialist after getting a referral from a primary-care doctor. Many who want – or need – the most cutting-edge technology and procedures come to the United States and pay out of pocket rather than suffer in line.
In Britain’s single-payer system, one in five cancer patients has to wait more than two months to start treatment. Delays even plague ambulance and emergency room services. Recently, junior doctors fed up with low pay went on strike, which may have contributed to at least one death.
Socialized medicine has failed in the United States, too. Just look at the Veterans Health Administration. Patients have died waiting for appointments. And the brilliant bureaucrats behind the VA’s new hospital in Aurora have exceeded their budget by more than 400 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at completecolorado.com ...
