The Waiting Lines in Canada

I regularly hear about the long waiting-lines for health services, especially things like surgery, in countries like Great Britain and Canada. Hearing that from angry patients is one thing -- that is just anecdotal evidence and could easily be quite biased: who doesn't want faster service? So actual data on this is what is needed. And fortunately, the Frasier Institute in Canada has put out an annual report of health care waiting-lines in Canada for 16 years now. Check out the 2006 version of their Waiting Your Turn publication, which is 90 pages of data and analysis on this issue. Just a quick scan of the graphs at the back show a general trend that is not positive. And here are a few paragraphs taken from their Executive Summary section:

Canada-wide total waiting time increased slightly in 2006 (continuing to hover near the 18-week mark)--and its level is high, both historically and internationally. Compared to 1993, waiting time in 2006 is 91 percent longer. Moreover, academic studies of waiting time have found that Canadians wait longer than Americans, Germans, and Swedes (sometimes) for cardiac care, although not as long as New Zealanders or the British.

The promise of the Canadian health care system is not being realized. On the contrary, a profusion of research reveals that cardiovascular surgery queues are routinely jumped by the famous and politically connected, that suburban and rural residents confront barriers to access not encountered by their urban counterparts, and that low-income Canadians have less access to specialists, particularly cardiovascular ones, are less likely to utilize diagnostic imaging,
and have lower cardiovascular and cancer survival rates than their higher-income neighbours.

This grim portrait is the legacy of a medical system offering low expectations cloaked in lofty rhetoric. Indeed, under the current regime--first-dollar coverage with use limited by waiting, and crucial medical resources priced and allocated by governments--prospects for improvement are dim. Only substantial reform of that regime is likely to alleviate the medical system's most curable disease--waiting times that are consistently and significantly longer than physicians feel is clinically reasonable.

According to them, average waiting times in Canada have increased by 90% since 1993... and waiting times are even longer in Great Britain! Ouch... no pun intended.

Our health care system in America is very flawed, no doubt about it. But the debate is not on that general question, but rather what should be done to improve it. The next time you hear folks arguing that we should move to a socialized medicine regime, consider all of this data provided by FI on waiting lines in Canada. And then consider that those in countries like Canada and Great Britain, who avoid those waiting lines by coming to the USA and paying for faster health services, won't be able to do so any longer if we have a system similar to theirs. The waiting lines in Canada and Great Britain would then become even longer (and or the wealthy and powerful would work harder to jump the lines). Even worse for Americans though would be this question: where would we then go to obtain faster, perhaps life-saving, health services when we most desperately need it? Nowhere it would seem.