Sunday, February 13, 2011

How Good Is Canadian Universal Healthcare?

People are choosing to ignore this "free" service and instead using medical brokers to find them alternatives in the U.S.

Writes the Canadian Times Colony:

Cross Border Access has been helping Canadians book appointments and negotiate fees for a variety of procedures in upstate New York since May...

Canadian Medical Association president Jeffrey Turnbull describes it as a byproduct of the Canadian system failing to meet the needs of its citizens.

“As long as wait times remain as long as they are or even worsen, Canadians who have resources will do what’s best for their own particular health,” he said. “If that means going south of the border or another jurisdiction outside of North America, they will.”
Writes Mark Perry:
How successful is the company at attracting Canadians to come to the U.S. and pay for medical care when it's "free" in Canada? According to the company's founder, business in 2010 more than doubled over 2009.

6 comments:

  1. I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove.

    This is no different from an American having a procedure refused by, say, Kaiser and then deciding to pay cash for the refused treatment, something that happens a couple of degrees of magnitude more often than any cross-border traffic.

    And looking at the numbers, you'll find that India and Thailand are far more popular places for medical tourism than the United States.

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  2. Anonymous, you're missing the point. The point is that government rationing synthetically decreases supply, hence increasing wait times. In our system, wait time is near zero, as fast as you can make an appointment. We don't have a supply issue, we have a cost issue, which is different.

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  3. Anonymous2, in fact we have both a supply and a cost issue in the US if people supposedly insured by the likes of Kaiser are constantly rejecting procedures (which is a lot worse than putting them on waiting lists, in my opinion) and forcing Americans to pay for them with their own money.

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  4. The regular peons can't leave for service. The elite, with their jets and money can. Then they tell us to suck it up as taxpayers to fund their communist system. Nice for you eh Danny, you jerk.

    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2510700

    Cheers from Kanada, oops, Canada.

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  5. Don`t believe this hogwash

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  6. Predictably, angry socialists have responded to this post by denouncing insurance companies. They fail to mention that these insurance companies receive many special privileges from government and would, in many cases, not exist in their current form without government intervention. Furthermore, one major reason these companies must deny service is that the government's interventions into health care have increased prices to exorbitantly high levels -- much higher than they would be in a free market.

    These socialists couldn't fathom a totally free market in health care, which would eliminate the problems caused by both Canada's communist system and American's fascist system. The socialists give us a terrible choice: either die in a fascist system because your insurance provider has denied service, or die in a socialist system because your wait time drags for months and/or because the equipment and service are subpar.

    The flight of sick Canadians to the U.S. illustrates, however, that at least some freedom in health care is still better than none.

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