On January 20, 2016, 18-year old Laura Hillier slipped away surrounded by her family while waiting for a stem cell transplant to treat her acute myeloid leukemia. But Laura did not die because of a lack of bone marrow donors since multiple matching donors had been identified six months earlier. Rather Laura was on the waiting list for a hospital bed--and enduring debilitating chemotherapy treatments in the meantime. You see, Laura had the misfortune of living in Canada where the government-run system of "free" medical care has produced an acute shortage of hospital beds for transplant patients. The local Ontario hospital that was treating Laura performs only 5 stem cell transplants per month and Laura was 33rd on the waiting list when donors were found in July 2015. Laura's mother attempted to find another hospital to perform the surgery but she discovered waiting lists throughout Ontario as well as throughout Canada. When Laura's mother brought her daughter's dire situation to the attention of the Ontario Health Minister's office, a spokesman for the Minister reassured:
It is our expectation that hospitals will prioritize patients based on medical urgency, however those decisions are made by each individual hospital.Of course Laura's death was totally unnecessary. It was caused by the shortage created by price controls in conjunction with the arbitrary and irrational "prioritizing " of patients needs by medical bureaucrats, which is at the core of every system of socialized medical care, whatever name it goes by. In the humane economy produced by laissez faire capitalism there are no shortages and no bureaucratic power over who lives and who dies. In such an economy consumers are all-powerful and dictate what goods are produced and...
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