Though he has written essays on topics as diverse as obesity and political campaigns, he is best known for his first book, published by ECW Press, when he was just 24: Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System.
Gratzer's father, George, is a professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba who emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1963 and to Canada in 1966.
When HillaryCare was debated in the United States, I remember vaguely thinking there was something good about the idea: After all, government should be involved in health care.
[1] During his second year of medical school, Gratzer began writing a book about problems with the Canadian health care system but could not get anyone interested.
[8] In August 1999, during his fourth year of medical school, ECW Press published the 24-year-old Gratzer's first book, Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System Gratzer wrote about deficiencies in Canadian health care and argued that they were the direct result of the system's design, and thus not amendable to simple reforms.
The spendthrifts argue that more government spending would solve every problem—from the attitude of the grumpiest hospital orderly to the lengthiest waiting list for radiation therapy… On the surface, they seem to have little in common.
[10][11] In June 2000, Gratzer graduated from medical school and in July 2000 began a five-year psychiatry residency program at the University of Toronto.
[13] In April 2002, ECW Press published Better Medicine: Reforming Canadian Health Care a book of essays edited by Gratzer.
[14] In 2004, Gratzer was first author of a peer-reviewed brief report "Lifetime rates of alcoholism in adults with anxiety, depression, or co-morbid depression/anxiety: a community survey of Ontario" published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
On June 30, 2005, Gratzer completed his University of Toronto psychiatry residency and became registered for independent practice of medicine in Ontario.
He advocated various reforms: Gratzer proposed turning over all current federal funding for Medicaid to state governments in the form of block grants to experiment with, using welfare reform as a model; tightening Medicaid eligibility for long-term care; expanding health savings accounts; and encouraging the purchase of private long term care insurance.
In the last chapter, he proposed more far-reaching reforms while acknowledging that neither political party would currently advocate them: The Foreword was written by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.
[21] During the campaign, Giuliani championed interstate health-insurance markets and tax parity for non-employer purchases of health insurance, both positions favored by Gratzer.
Gratzer testified several times during the recent health-care reform debates, including before the House Budget and Ways and Means Committees.
In a June 2009 U.S. Congressional hearing on the issue of single-payer health care, Gratzer and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) clashed over Canadian healthcare statistics.
According to a June 29, 2009, front-page article in Canada's National Post, "armed with a stack of statistics about patient wait lists in Canada, and a fusillade of dire warnings about the life-threatening consequences of government-managed care," Gratzer "has emerged as the go-to expert witness for GOP lawmakers hoping to sow doubt in Congress about the wisdom of embracing Mr. Obama's call for a public health insurance option to compete with private insurers.
In a widely reprinted Los Angeles Times piece, he argued that society was suffering from a McVictim Syndrome with "[t]oo many pundits, public health experts and politicians are working overtime to find scapegoats for America's obesity epidemic."