First we look at the sad state of Canada’s health care system:
1. A typical Canadian seeking surgery had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007 between referral from a general practitioner and treatment (averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed), reaching an all-time record high, up from 17.8 weeks in 2006.
Which bares a striking similarity to Britian’s health care system:
Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.
And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.
The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.
Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.
Yet as this is going on, many on the left are pushing to get the United States health care system to mirror the Canadian and British health care system.
More on the Canadian health care system here and here. More on the British health care system here.
These stats raise several questions, which I am sure you are researching and will post about soon! How was the population increase from 1998 to 2007 taken into consideration? I wonder how the *percentage* of people waiting for surgery has actually changed. Straight numbers like the ones used in these graphs don’t say much. Also, it would say more to categorize the wait times — how many people had to wait for, say, an organ transplant (waiting for a donor) versus waiting to get through paperwork. Finally, I think at the end of the day this does not mean that the U.S. should NOT push for a national health care system, it just shows that we need to find the right kind of system, one that will grow as the population grows, that will address health care costs, and above all, provide medical insurance to everyone, not just those who can afford to fly abroad for treatment. ~ I look forward to reading more about this on your blog ~ thanks for the info.
Another thing to keep in mind when discussing a nationalized health care system is this (cost), this (false hopes), and this (incentives). Especially when the US health care system has advantages that single payer health care advocates often fail to mention like here and here.
I agree though - the debate rages on, and in health care like in many other areas, there are no easy answers. Personally, I take a wait and see approach. Delay a single payer (or nationalized) health care system as much as possible, and see what results they get in other countries first, before we do anything too daring.