This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 16, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Canadian experience with national health care has produced waiting lines,

rationed care, and it does not produced the preventive and patient-focused

care that just about everyone wants.

So says Sally Pipes, President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, and author of the new book The Top Ten Myths of American

Health Care.

She spoke at the Cato Institute's Hyac Auditorium yesterday.

People who live in countries with socialist government-run systems wait and wait.

Sylvia Burlesconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, when he was told that he needed a heart

pacemaker, he didn't listen to Michael Moore and have it implanted in Rome or Paris or London, even Havana, Cuba.

He came here to the Cleveland Clinic where he had his heart pacemaker installed.

My mother, who in June 2005 was convinced she had colon cancer,

and she went to her primary care doctor who said, no you don't have colon cancer. And she went to her primary care doctor who said, no you don't have

colon cancer. So living in San Francisco when my mother told me that I said, well how

does he know? And she said, well he just told me I didn't. So I I said well call him back and tell him you need a

colonoscopy so she did and so she went to see him and he said well at your age we cannot

provide a colonoscopy for you we we'll do an x-ray.

Now anyone in the medical profession will know that an x-ray will not show whether you have

colon cancer, but it's certainly cheaper than having a colonoscopy. In late November my mother called me and said

I have colon cancer I said how do you know and she said because I'm hemorrhaging

from my colon so I called the doctor and I said well now what do we do and he said well

...