Thanks Canada!
(Having said that, if you're visiting Canada you'll need to check your health coverage. Medical coverage is provided to Canadian residents, not just anyone who happens to be in Canada at the time.)
And it's a he.
"Fraser Institute has—for over two decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces.
This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 20.9 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 19.8 weeks reported in 2018."
Source: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
2. "medically necessary" does not tell you anything about the severity of illness or appropriateness of waiting. There are many medically necessary things for which it's okay to wait some time. In the Canadian system, things are dealt with at the level of urgency appropriate to the severity of the issue. Yes, it's not perfect, but it does result in generally better population-wide health outcomes in Canada than the US.
That's very much an ad hominem fallacy, and unless you have specific evidence that they falsified the data in question, I'm just going to leave it at that (similarly to how you conclude that 'right wing' is enough of a reason to dismiss something). Last I checked, science doesn't care who you voted for. Once we start dismissing research based on the opinions of the researchers, we've essentially implemented thought crime. All research is motivated by prior opinion. We call it a hypothesis. Whether it happens to align with a political ideology doesn't invalidate it. If the research is somehow wrong, then there will be a way to disprove it through science. Using politics to argue against science isn't appropriate.
No, it would be an ad hominem if I said "the Fraser institute produced it, so you can safely line your bird cage with it". I didn't say that, I just pointed to the institution's well-known bias.
> Using politics to argue against science isn't appropriate.
Oh yeah, how dare I impugn non-peer reviewed "science" written by two non-PhD's, where 25% of the citations are to other non-peer reviewed reports written by the Fraser Institute and the others are random statscan links. This "science" is just a summary of responses to a questionnaire.
> Mission Statement: WTA physicians are concerned over delayed access to health care for Canadians. We work collaboratively with our stakeholders to inform, advocate, and provide solutions to achieve timely, appropriate and equitable access to high-quality health care.
And now from the 2015 report itself (the most recent one):
> "Ontario reports that the maximum amount of time that nine out of 10 patients with complex needs spent to complete their ED visit and be admitted to the hospital was 25.7 hours (June 2015). The maximum amount of time that nine out of 10 patients with minor or uncomplicated conditions stayed in the ED was 4 hours. As outlined in previous WTA reports, many of the factors responsible for the lengthy waits to be admitted to a hospital bed are system-wide failures such as high numbers of ALC patients and a lack of community-based supports."
On primary care:
> Wait times are reported for each of the five regional primary care networks in the province. The average wait time for an appointment between January and March 2015 was 23 days, ranging from 0 to 72 days.
I can see a primary care doctor within 1-2 days here in the US. Even when I was on welfare, the wait times were no more than a few days.
So this report seems to be consistent with the one you were complaining about (which by the way was circulated and referenced widely by mainstream media). However, I see no evidence of "political bias" in this one so I hope you can accept that this isn't that controversial. These wait times are clear facts, not opinions. An opinion would be "Canada has the best health care system", which I am arguing against, citing facts.
Source: http://www.waittimealliance.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/EN...
No, I do not think the US has the best system either, but pointing to Canada as a target benchmark is a non-starter from the way I see it.
> Before implying that Canada has the final answer to health care
You are the only person who's brought this up. I literally said "it's not perfect."
Here's what it comes down to. Population-wide health outcomes in Canada are certainly no worse than they are in the US. Arguably by a number of measures they're better. Health outcomes for the most economically-vulnerable segment of the population are much, much better in Canada. Nobody is bankrupted in Canada by medical care. It's the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. Canada spends much less of its GDP per capita on healthcare than does the US. A large portion of the US is already covered by a patchwork-quilt national healthcare system.
Now whether you want to go with the Canadian system, or the UK's system, or the French system or the Swiss system - honestly I don't give a shit. People are dying because they can't afford to deal with the nightmare of a system here.
I provided details on a single instance of an interaction with the health system. Hence 'ancedata'. I made no claim that every interaction will have the same outcome.
> waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year
Do you have the data for wait times for other countries? And, I suppose, wait times of those in the US with and without private insurance?
https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/text-altern...
29% of Canadians report waiting 4 or more hours the last time they went to the hospital emergency department.
Patients who reported waiting 4 or more hours: Country results from highest to lowest
Canada, 29% (below average); Sweden, 20%; Norway, 13%; United States, 11%; Commonwealth Fund average, 11%; Australia, 10%; New Zealand, 10%; United Kingdom, 8%; Switzerland, 7%; Netherlands, 4%; Germany, 3%; France, 1%
China has until recently had a less socialized healthcare system than the US. They've made massive strides towards trying to provide a universal system over the last few years, but they are still a developing country, so I'm not sure why you think comparing with China is a good idea, other than, I guess a knee jerk (and incorrect) assumption that it'd all be government run...
Meanwhile socialized healthcare systems are working out fantastically well for large parts of the developed world, but really the most important factor is universal healthcare - universal systems range from fully private multi-payer systems with some system for subsidizing those who can't pay, to fully socialized single payer systems.
What the vast majority of them have in common is that they result in far lower total healthcare spending than in the US thanks to actually regulating healthcare with the public in mind rather than insurers and healthcare providers. In fact, a large number of countries spend less total on healthcare per capita than US taxpayers pay towards Medicare and Medicaid alone, before you even factor in US private insurance.
_You_ get healthcare as well. It's not just "someone else", it's you, your family, your friends, and everyone you care about. No one should go into a spiraling life of debt because they broke an arm or got sick at an inopportune time.
It's easy to think that China is run as a socialist country because there's "communist" in the name of the ruling party, but the truth is very far from that; in many aspects China is a ruthless capitalistic free-for-all society with less socialist policies than even the US.
It's actually very informative, to me. Sorry you don't see it that way.
Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.
That being said, there’s been a trend in the US recently, where hospitals have very aggressively gone after unpaid bills of the uninsured, because some administrators see it as money they’re leaving on the table. It’s more prevalent in rural areas, where there’s often only one hospital to go to, and consumers have no choice but to go to the hospital with a terrible reputation.
In some cases, they’ve convinced the judicial system to garnish the uninsured person’s wages, to get “their money back”. IMO it’s clearly illegal and it won’t last much longer, but yeah the system is crazy. :/
Actual poor people are a slightly different story and often left alone fairly easily.
Insurance/“cash” can “negotiate” but at the end of the day the average hospital stay is near $4000/day.
A friend in the US had the same procedure outpatient, and it was $6000, $1200 of which she was responsible for. On the upside, they gave her 30 Vicodin for the post-op pain and no follow-up about said opioids, where I only got a week's worth of Tramadol (much less potent) and a follow-up with my regular doc who wanted to know at what rate I was taking them. My friend was slightly tempted to sell her leftovers...
Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not be a consideration, but often is.
If you are traveling to the US, please make sure you get as much travelers health insurance as possible.