Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting here all day; there is nothing closer to my heart than work and health care.
I was fortunate at 12.30 today to listen to the great American fighter, Ralph Nader, talk about health care to the nurses association. He said that in the United States of America some 80,000 people died in hospital due to malpractice. That is more people
than those killed by accidents and those killed by homicides. His contention was that it was malpractice and that some doctors in their system were actually operating on Americans who had no disease at all.
We hear a lot about systems in the world. Mr. Nader said, and I think the parliamentary secretary from Vancouver Centre said it as well, that our system rates between one and three in the world. There is no question about that. Mr. Nader also mentioned that some 38 million Americans do not have any health care. He said the longest waiting line in the world is for those with no health care at all.
Our friends opposite talk about having a two tier system. I want to cover that point. We have a $72 billion pot of money. What happens if we start to shift the money over? Profit will motivate many people such as insurance companies. Most doctors are very good. I would not say anything against them because many of my friends are doctors. They follow the Hippocratic oath. They are well versed, Christian and want to help people. However, there is the occasional doctor who looks at the balance sheet.
I got a pile of books from a friend in Los Angeles on their medicare system. They talk about waiting lines as if there is a panacea in the United States. There are many scam artists in the United States. They go for capitation. If five doctors each have 1,500 patients and each patient pays about $200 a month, it amounts to a pile of money. A patient can select one of the five doctors. However if the doctor sends too many people for CAT scans and various other expensive procedures he is called before a procedure committee and the patients are stacked up.
There are no easy answers. Our system is good. It needs to be fixed. We cannot legislate against stupidity or when people do not do things right. If there is a waiting line for hip fractures I am sure the hospital board will allocate enough resources to shorten the line.
How does my friend from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca envisage this two tier system? When people are sick and cannot pay for services we end up with a two tier system. The doctor says he will see the patient in the clinic across the street at night because there is not enough money in the system. That is what happens in a two tier system.