Seriously, what's Megan McArdle's point here? When you've abandoned the argument that waiting times are unknown to America and retreated back to the idea that two of the dozens of national health care models we could choose from restrict patient autonomy, your ground is getting shakier and shakier. And, for that matter, sort of untrue.
"The difference," writes Megan, "is in a free market system you can go see a different doctor. In Canada or Britain, you just have to wait it out." It's nice that we've now made Germany and Japan and France into free market systems. They're horrified, I'm sure.
But that's the way these conversations always go, isn't it? Folks act as if the only two other countries in existence are the UK and Canada. It'd be like if I worked at Ford, and every time someone suggested that I make a better economy car, I pointed at some failed GM creation. Since when do policy discussions proceed by cherrypicking bad examples, rather than examining better models?
Wait, don't answer that.
