Canada’s Health Care System

Re: “Socialized Medicine Cuts Canadian Costs--and Care” (front page, April 9).

The dilemma of how society can bear the cost of good medical care for all and at the same time provide the latest and the best in high tech for some is brought in focus by the tragedy of Joel Bondy. He died while waiting for heart surgery because of the limited number of facilities providing such care in Canada. The same dilemma underlies the questions limiting the availability of trauma centers for all or just some or the use of rare and expensive therapy of any kind. Indeed, there is a philosophical anachronism in providing longer life, often useless and sometimes unwanted, when the drain on the Earth’s resources caused by too many people causes so much pain and suffering.

It is not surprising that the United States, a wealthy entrepreneurial nation with a rich heritage in biomedical effort, would be in the forefront of providing high-tech medicine. To most participants in the system it is unthinkable that medical care would not provide the latest and the best to all who might need it. Indeed, this is what drives the machine.

It has long been apparent to most participants in this “system” that the only factor limiting the provision of high-tech medicine to all who need it is financial cost. Realistically what Canada, Great Britain and, earlier Sweden and many communist countries, recognized is that their respective economies simply would not bear the cost. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that there will be no significant change in this country until the money runs out, as is occurring for an increasingly large portion of our society.

CHARLES C. CRADDOCK, MD

Pacific Palisades