Median wait time by province in 2016:
• New Brunswick: 38.8 weeks
• Nova Scotia: 34. 8
• P.E.I: 31.4
• Newfoundland and Labrador: 26
• British Columbia: 25.2
• Alberta: 22.9
• Manitoba: 20.6
• Quebec: 18.9
• Saskatchewan: 16.6
• Ontario: 15.6
In terms of specialized treatment, national wait times were longest for neurosurgery (46.9 weeks) and shortest for medical oncology (3.7 weeks).
• Neurosurgery: 46.9 weeks
• Orthopaedic surgery: 38
• Ophthalmology: 28.5
• Plastic Surgery: 25.9
First, there is a well-propagated, pernicious myth that Canadians are pioneers in health care, and that access to care is a basic human right. The universality of the system has become a key part of Canada’s national identity, thanks in no small part to propagandists who ignore the widespread suffering wrought by the CHA in order to paint the country as some sort of socialist utopia.
Second, the system’s costs are hidden. Many Canadians — and many progressives abroad — like to think that health care is “free” in Canada, when in fact, Canadian taxpayers pay, on average, $10,500 per year for all their health-care needs. Canadians simply have no concept of how much the services they consume cost, since the CHA prohibits providers from ever showing patients a bill.
Finally, there is the fact that Canada’s single-payer system is made possible only by an accident of geography: It is propped up by the U.S. health-care industry next door, which provides a parallel private system for very sick and very rich Canadians while acting as the driving force for global medical innovation.
Ultimately, the antidote for Canada’s poor health outcomes and long wait times has been for Canadians to seek care elsewhere. Don’t take my word for it. A few years ago, Dr. Martin Samuels, the founder of the neurology department at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, wrote in Forbes about his experiences as a visiting professor in Canada:
"The reason the Canadian health-care system works as well as it does (and that is not by any means optimal) is because 90 percent of the population is within driving distance of the United States where the privately insured can be Seattled, Minneapolised, Mayoed, Detroited, Chicagoed, Clevelanded, and Buffaloed, thus relieving the pressure by the rich and influential to change a system that works well enough for the other people but not for them, especially when they are worried or in pain. In the United States, there is no analogous safety valve, so the influential simply demand a different level of care and receive it."
In other words, Canada’s rigid state monopoly on health insurance works only because Canadians secretly have a private alternative: America’s market-based system. It isn’t just “rich and influential” Canadians who seek treatment in the U.S., either. In a recent government document obtained by the Toronto Star, five stem-cell-transplant directors laid out the “crisis” in Ontario, revealing that “the health ministry approved more than $100 million in spending recently to redirect hundreds of patients who will probably die waiting for transplants in Ontario to hospitals in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit.” Likewise, a recent report from the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public-policy think tank, estimated that more than 52,000 Canadians received medical treatment outside of Canada in 2014.
Canadians might like their single-payer health-care system in theory, but in practice, large numbers of them are going elsewhere for care.
National Review April 13, 2017
• New Brunswick: 38.8 weeks
• Nova Scotia: 34. 8
• P.E.I: 31.4
• Newfoundland and Labrador: 26
• British Columbia: 25.2
• Alberta: 22.9
• Manitoba: 20.6
• Quebec: 18.9
• Saskatchewan: 16.6
• Ontario: 15.6
In terms of specialized treatment, national wait times were longest for neurosurgery (46.9 weeks) and shortest for medical oncology (3.7 weeks).
• Neurosurgery: 46.9 weeks
• Orthopaedic surgery: 38
• Ophthalmology: 28.5
• Plastic Surgery: 25.9
First, there is a well-propagated, pernicious myth that Canadians are pioneers in health care, and that access to care is a basic human right. The universality of the system has become a key part of Canada’s national identity, thanks in no small part to propagandists who ignore the widespread suffering wrought by the CHA in order to paint the country as some sort of socialist utopia.
Second, the system’s costs are hidden. Many Canadians — and many progressives abroad — like to think that health care is “free” in Canada, when in fact, Canadian taxpayers pay, on average, $10,500 per year for all their health-care needs. Canadians simply have no concept of how much the services they consume cost, since the CHA prohibits providers from ever showing patients a bill.
Finally, there is the fact that Canada’s single-payer system is made possible only by an accident of geography: It is propped up by the U.S. health-care industry next door, which provides a parallel private system for very sick and very rich Canadians while acting as the driving force for global medical innovation.
Ultimately, the antidote for Canada’s poor health outcomes and long wait times has been for Canadians to seek care elsewhere. Don’t take my word for it. A few years ago, Dr. Martin Samuels, the founder of the neurology department at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, wrote in Forbes about his experiences as a visiting professor in Canada:
"The reason the Canadian health-care system works as well as it does (and that is not by any means optimal) is because 90 percent of the population is within driving distance of the United States where the privately insured can be Seattled, Minneapolised, Mayoed, Detroited, Chicagoed, Clevelanded, and Buffaloed, thus relieving the pressure by the rich and influential to change a system that works well enough for the other people but not for them, especially when they are worried or in pain. In the United States, there is no analogous safety valve, so the influential simply demand a different level of care and receive it."
In other words, Canada’s rigid state monopoly on health insurance works only because Canadians secretly have a private alternative: America’s market-based system. It isn’t just “rich and influential” Canadians who seek treatment in the U.S., either. In a recent government document obtained by the Toronto Star, five stem-cell-transplant directors laid out the “crisis” in Ontario, revealing that “the health ministry approved more than $100 million in spending recently to redirect hundreds of patients who will probably die waiting for transplants in Ontario to hospitals in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit.” Likewise, a recent report from the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public-policy think tank, estimated that more than 52,000 Canadians received medical treatment outside of Canada in 2014.
Canadians might like their single-payer health-care system in theory, but in practice, large numbers of them are going elsewhere for care.
National Review April 13, 2017
