Customer Reviews

Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health-Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Sally Pipes's clear-eyed analysis of the problems with both the US and Canadian health care systems is exactly what is needed to cut through the campaign rhetoric of this season. As a Canadian who lives in the US, Pipes is able to weigh the pluses and minuses of both systems -- finding more fault in Canada's sclerotic single-payer system, where waiting lists delay patients' access to life-saving treatments, but not giving either system a clean bill of health. I strongly recommend this short, but thorough and anecdote-packed, look at how to fix two great countries' inadequate health care systems.

I love when a writer nails a problem and also recognizes the political and social difficulties we will face in trying to effect the solution. This Pipes has done well. As a young physician, I soon realized that the health of my community depended more on how I VOTED than how well I was trained. Now as a physician of 20 years, I have seen first hand how the current health care system fosters a sense of entitlement to "free" care with no accountability or responsibility on the part of the consumer(patients): here in the US not Canada! The solution is NOT more of the same government intervention and insulation of patients from their health care decisions. But try telling this to the media, academia or even politicos who are either ignorant of the facts or fearful of their constituents.
Should be required reading for all MDs in training.

Interesting that the One-Star reviews below are from people who did not read the book and do not comment on its actual contents.

If the writer has a particular viewpoint -- golly, maybe that's what motivated her to WRITE A BOOK. Duh. It would be a pretty bleak literary world if writers were not allowed to have opinions, or to write as a response to their own intellectual motivations.

Those of you who'd slam her simply becuase you can verify that her political and economic opinions vary from yours, might actually learn something from considering another viewpoint and indulging in the information that supports that viewpoint. If you read her book, and can spar with its content, fine, knock youself out.

As an American who now lives in Canada, Sally Pipes is not at all correct. There are NO waiting lists and I call my doctor and I get in that day. I LOVE the health care system here. I used to pay for my health insurance before I moved to canada and now I don't and I get the same care for free!! Plus I get all the name brand drugs if I need them. When I was living in the US, my health insurance turned me down for pre-natal vitimans, which I thought was ridiculious. I don't know where sally gets her facts from.

People who write books like this get invited to all the right places in this country. The reason is simple. Our system is is only possible medical system. It's not that other systems do not exist - it is that people in our system cannot even IMAGINE that other viable systems exist, must less that they function quite well. We never hear about them except in the negative. Sally Pipes would never be allowed to speak in our system unless she came with a satchel of critcisms of her own system. That was her ticket - that's how she got on stage. There's a pervasive sort of censorship going on here made all the worse because people in this country don't know how pervasive that censorhsip is. We are a free and open and intellectually closed shop.

Sally Pipes will hit the forum circuit down here and get invited to all the interview shows. This is because she criticizes the Canadian system. Were she to praise it, she might as well be sitting in an igloo.

If you Google for Pacific Research Institute (Sally Pipes is President and CEO) and browse their offerings, you'll see strong evidence that this organization exists to promote conservative ideas and 'debunk' progressive 'myths' about women's issues, the environment, fairness, health care, globalization, drug importation, etc etc.

Here's a blurb from the "About" section of the PRI site:
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The mission of the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is to champion freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free-market policy solutions.

Since its founding in 1979, PRI has remained steadfast to the vision of a free and civil society where individuals can achieve their full potential.

Put simply, public policy is too important to be left just to the experts. Individuals are the real decision makers when it comes to their schools, health care, and environment.
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So take Sally's book with a boulder-sized grain of salt and find other sources of info about Canada's system to supplement your education on the issue. I'm sure it's not perfect (Canadian system), but Sally Pipes has a strong idealogical bent (and conservative connections) that call into question her severe condemnation of the Canadian system.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, but have just heard portions of her lecture at the Commonwealth Club on public radio and was alarmed enough at her horror stories about waiting lists to want to find out more about her background.

Oh, and Google Sally Pipes too! You'll turn up plenty of conservative links as well as some links that vigorously contest her characterizations of the Canadian system.

Thank goodness for Google and for Amazon comments!