In September 2003, Harvard Medical Professor Dr. Steffie Woolhandler had this to say in the New England Journal of Medicine: “A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system.”
While I’m sure Dr. Woolhandler is a brilliant clinician and activist, I firmly believe that most of the economic data will show that a single-payer health system (which resembles Canada more than the U.S.) cannot provide access to all, or perhaps even most… and would cost this country more in lost lives and productivity, not to mention, increased taxes.
The Frasier Institute, a non-partisan, Canadian research organization recently released some scary data: wait times for Canadians needing surgery or other therapeutic treatment hit an all time high of 18 weeks in 2007. That’s over 4 months. “Despite government promises and the billions of dollars funneled into the Canadian health care system, the average patient waited more than 18 weeks in 2007 between seeing their family doctor and receiving the surgery or treatment they required,” said Nadeem Esmail, Director of Health System Performance Studies.
This is an increase from 2006 (18.3 vs. 17.8 weeks). Some provinces are worse than others, like Saskatchewan (27.2 weeks), New Brunswick (25.2 weeks) and Nova Scotia (24.8 weeks). The wait time is roughly equal parts waiting to see a specialist (once you’ve seen a primary care physician and gotten your required referral) and waiting to receive treatment once you’ve seen a specialist. Given the growing shortage of primary care physicians in Canada, these numbers don’t even factor in the time it takes to get an appointment to see the primary care doc.
Diagnostic technology suffers from similar exaggerated wait times in Canada. Average queues for a CT scan are 4.8 weeks. For an MRI, 10.1 weeks. Oftentimes these types of diagnostics are needed to check for imminent, if not emergency medical problems. A close friend recently spent a week in the hospital with multiple pulmonary embolisms. This was a life threatening condition that was detected literally just in the nick of time with a CT scan..which was administered within an hour of arriving at his doctor’s office. If he had been in Toronto, he would likely have died. Blood clots don’t patiently wait 4 weeks…
In Canada, people are waiting for 827,429 surgical procedures. This is a 7.8% increase from last year…and it’s getting worse. And with data showing that famous and politically-connected people routinely jump the queues, it’s difficult to even make the argument that everyone is given the same level of access.
Esmail concludes by saying: “This grim portrait is the legacy of a medical system offering low expectations cloaked in lofty rhetoric. It’s one defended by special interest groups with a stake in maintaining the status quo. The only way to solve the system’s most curable disease – lengthy wait times that are consistently and significantly longer than physicians feel is clinically reasonable – is for substantial reform of the Canadian health care system.” (emphasis mine).
Lofty rhetoric is what gets votes…
[...] 8, 2008 by bart In my recent post “Let’s Pick on Canada Now,” I discussed the physician shortage in Canada and how it has affected wait times for [...]