By the time a patient gets an MRI to diagnose cancer in Canada, they’re dead. Canadians have to wait forever to get to see a specialist. And elective surgery? Better get your grandkids’ on the list now for knee replacements…
That’s a common view of the health care system up north.
And it is dead wrong.
Here’s the real picture
According to self-reported data analyzed in Health Affairs (sub req), median waiting times were
four weeks for specialist visit for new illness/condition
three weeks for MRI, CT, and angiogram
four weeks for non-emergency surgery
That doesn’t mean Canada is perfect; according to a Canadian governmental report. Approximately 11% of those 15 years of age or older (2.8 million Canadians) visited a medical specialist in 2005 – among them, 19% reported that they faced difficulties accessing care. Approximately 6% (1.6 million) reported that they had non-emergency surgery – among them, 13% reported that they had difficulty accessing care. Similarly, 9% of the population 15 years and older (2.2 million Canadians) accessed selected diagnostic tests – among them, 13% reported difficulties accessing care.
Waiting times for some procedures have actually increased recently, but that appears to be largely due to an explosion in the volume of procedures performed; bypass procedure volume was up 50% from 1998 – 2003, cataract surgery up 32%, and knee replacement up 30%.
There is much work to be done in the basics of data tracking, analysis and reporting.
But Canadians are not waiting years to get an MRI.
So, 19% of Canadians hand difficulty accessing care.
Since there are over 300 Million of us in the United States, we can expect that 57,000,000 of us will have difficulty accessing care.
Why would that not be considered a bad thing?
Aubrey, Good point! Today we have (supposedly) 40 million people without healthcare. Under Joe’s proposal we would go to a “Canada Style” system where we would pay more in taxes, and as you point out roughly 57 million of us would encounter similar problems. Not to mention the inevitable displacement of workers in the insurance, billing, credentialing and physicians services areas as we would be converting over to this single payor system. To me, these are the FACTS that get missed in the discussion. Single payor is a bad idea!
Not sure what is meant by “difficulty accessing care.” That could mean had to wait more than 2-3 weeks for an appointment or had to drive more than 20 miles or didn’t get their first choice of specialist. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US had similar numbers.
Also, the 19% applies to the 11% of Canadians over 15 who accessed specialty medical care in 2005. If there are 250M in the US age 15+, then about 27.5M would access specialty medical care and about 5.2M of those might have some sort of difficulty. Whatever difficult they had, I’m sure it would be nowhere near the difficulty faced by the 47M in the U.S. without insurance.
And the 47M just includes people who didn’t have any kind of insurance during all of 2006. How many millions more were covered by inadequate plans having huge deducibles, low maximums and/or coverage holes?
Dorrence – do not put words in my mouth. nowhere have i advocated single payer, in fact I have pointed out the issues with it. if you are not going to be honest do not comment on this blog.
Aubrey – once again, you fail to read a post.
Gentlemen, if you want to participate, engage your brains before your keyboards.
Paduda
Perhaps, but we would pay zero in premiums. Premiums, taxes, tomato-tomahto.
I guess some people just enjoy being grifted for 16 percent of GDP when we could get the same or better care and the same or better outcomes for 11 percent of GDP.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070914/belinda_Stronach_070914/20070914?hub=Health
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070914
/20070914?hub=Health
Might have to copy + paste in 2 parts…
“…Stronach went to U.S. for cancer treatment: report
Updated Fri. Sep. 14 2007 7:57 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, who is battling breast cancer, travelled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment, says a report. ”
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/CaliforniaDreaming.pdf
?
The most obvious problem with Canadian health care is wait times for medical services.
In 1993, Canadian patients waited on average 9.3 weeks between the time they saw their
family physician and the time they actually received specialist treatment. By 2006, that
wait had nearly doubled to 17.8 weeks. And, wait times in Canada are almost double the
wait that physicians consider clinically reasonable [Esmail and Walker, 2006b].
I am suspicious of the pronouncements of the Fraser Institute, given that it is a right-wing ‘think tank’ with a self-described mission “to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals.” The Health Affairs is a peer-reviewed journal, resulting in oversight not usually provided by advocacy think tanks. There’s clearly a discrepancy in the wait times reported by both referenced sources. Did the Fraser Institute look at this variable in such a way to reinfoce their perspective? I’d certainly put my money on the source that doesn’t have an ideological ax to grind.
But there are a number of issues related to the US health care system not addressed in this thread.
Everyone in Canada is covered regardless of income.
Finally, consumer surveys in the US show considerable dissatisfaction with health care costs and delivery. And these surveys don’t report the ‘attitudes’ of those without coverage. Maybe a better cross-border comparison would be asking people in each country whether they would prefer their system or the one the other has.