An article from some doctors who have worked on both sides of the border. They have no difficulty discussing problems with Canadian healthcare, such as some procedures that are less readily available than in the U.S. and some of the delays in some specialized services. But, overall, the lower systemic costs, the minimization of bureaucracy through streamlined billing, and the accessibility of all Canadians regardless of ability to pay are named as positives of the Canadian system. This is a good read for some thoughtful analysis of Doctors…

Overall, they indicated that although the Canadian model is not perfect, it is a good system in which patients generally receive timely and competent care and physicians have fewer practice hassles compared with their American counterparts.

“I think universal coverage works,” said Hesam Farivar-Mohseni, MD, of Ontario’s Brampton Civic Hospital, a Canadian citizen who spent nearly 11 years in the United States. Following a two-year fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he spent time working in New York and at West Virginia University Hospitals in Morgantown.

“Patients in Canada are not being denied anything,” he said. “People in the U.S. think that patients here [in Canada] are waiting outside the hospital, they have no access to the hospital, and they’re dying because this is government-sponsored health care. That’s not true at all. If there’s a serious disease the family doctor calls a specialist and the person is seen right away. If a patient has a kidney stone or something similar, they may wait for eight hours, but that’s true in the States, too. Such patients don’t get seen in the emergency room there right away, either.

read the rest of the article…

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He says Canadian single-payer “works really well if you don’t get too sick.” In fact, it’s the opposite – it works really well if you do get too sick, because you jump to the front of the queue for care… And yes, there is a queue -if it is less serious, you wait some, if it is more serious or life-threatening, you don’t.

The reason this story is unfair goes far beyond the apples and oranges comparison a U.S. ‘public option’ and the Canadian single-payer system. The real problem with the story is the implication that we Canadians are all waiting around for life-saving surgery, or we are heading to the U.S. to get some real care. They cherry pick a few stories that seem to prove their point, but these are people who end up absorbing huge medical bills if they go to the U.S., and thus is only for those with cash to pay for U.S. medical care. These ’sufferers’ in Canada would be suffering much more if they were uninsured or under-insured and in the U.S.

Looking specifically at one of Fox’s cherry-picked subjects, Foreign Affair to Remember comments on how Fox News just keeps bringing out Lin Gilbert from Vancouver. She is poor and had to wait for treatment for her chronic back pain:

So Fox seems to trot out this poor lady, Lin Gilbert, whenever they need a worst-case scenario to spook the population away from any sort of health care change. OK, if you want to talk horror stories, maybe Fox should interview Monique Zimmerman-Stein, who has been nearly blind for the last two years from Stickler syndrome. She recently decided to forego her own treatment to save funds to treat her two daughters, who also suffer from the condition.

And where in Canada does she live? Florida. Watch how the insurance companies treat her and tell me how proud you are of our system.

News Corpse has this to say about Ms. Gilbert back in July:

Lin Gilbert suffered from debilitating back pain that she says was untreated in an untimely manner in her native Vancouver… eventually she got the surgery she needed and is pain free today. It cost her nothing. She has no debt related to her medical treatment. An American with the same problem would still be suffering or would have racked up an unmanageable debt that would haunt them and their family for the rest of their life.

I can’t speak to what delayed the treatments in Canada for these women, but surveys show that they are the exceptions. Most Canadians are satisfied with their healthcare program, with an overwhelming 82% saying that they prefer their system to a private system like that of their neighbors to the south. Furthermore, a Gallup poll showed that Canadians are far more satisfied with their system than we Americans are with ours.

While there is no denying that there are waits in Canada, would Lin Gilbert have even been able to get care if she lived in the U.S.? Fox doesn’t say.

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Detroit Free Press, Sept 28th

This Canadian is tired of US media (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX) transmitting health care falsehoods to the public. I would expect this type of malarkey from the representative of a US for-profit health care insurance company.

Furthermore the media has been no mention of the numerous Americans who are presently living abroad in countries with a private health care system in medical exile.

This Canadian would rather pay a little extra tax than the exorbitant premiums to a for-profit health insurance company. As Americans you have every freedom to fill the coffers of those aforementioned companies.

Now you all can say you know a Canadian, who along with well over 80% of the population is proud of our state of the art health care system. However I respectfully request that the media quit brow beating the remaining first world nations who all offer a single payer health care system.

Ian Montrose

Belle River, Ontario, Canada

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On a recent trip to Canada, I spent some time reading The Globe and Mail. In an article on Page A17 of the Sept. 14 issue, economist Eugene Lang and health policy adviser Philip DeMont compare the Canadian (medicare) and U.S. health care systems.

They observe that “the hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.” Lang and DeMont go on to discuss the “inconvenient truth” that “Canada’s approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance.”

They proceed to compare the two systems using four indicators of health care efficiency: life expectancy, infant mortality, cost differences, and percentage of citizens covered. On each of these measures, Canadians enjoy clear advantages over their U.S. neighbors.

read the rest of the letter

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I just returned recently from visiting my mother in Fargo, which I do several times a year. I am an American citizen who has lived in Canada for 20 years, and I am a permanent resident teaching at the university in Regina. I am following the health reform debate, and I am bothered by the severe misrepresentation that is occurring about the Canada Health Act and ways in which a universal public health care program is being portrayed in the American media, especially in the attack ads by the opponents to reform.

I was covered from the first day I moved to Saskatchewan in August 1989 and have only used the system lightly until recently. I had a major episode involving a constricture of an artery two and a half years ago and was impressed about the quality of care that was extended to me. I was treated by first-class specialists, and I feel I was given excellent attention. I had free choice of my doctor (general practitioner), and his office was within blocks of my home. However, I have also witnessed how individuals who were severely impoverished, but am sure would have no insurance in an American context, received care in a prompt and efficient manner.

While I pay higher rates of income tax and fuel taxes, I do not pay medical insurance premiums. I have an optional supplemental insurance program for medications, dental and eye care through my employer, and there are proposals being discussed publicly in individual provinces and across Canada to see amendments to the Health Act potentially for extending future benefits to these additional services.

In an op-ed piece that appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail (Sept. 14, A13), a number of comparisons were drawn between the health systems of Canada and the United States. With life expectancy as a basic measure of health care, a U.S. citizen will live to 77.8 years on average, while in Canada it is 80.4. American infants have a mortality rate of 6.37 per every thousand, while in Canada the rate is 5.4. Then comparing the percentage of gross national product used for health costs, Canadians spend 10 percent while Americans spend 16 percent.

While universal health care has costs, it also has efficiencies. Wait times are an ongoing challenge, but prioritized care based on severity of condition is reasonable and effective. The Canadian experience needs a balanced assessment, and a quality of life without the fear of medical shortfall speaks for itself.

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My 76-year-old sister has lived in British Columbia most of her adult life. In the past decade she has had two hip replacements and a knee replacement. She had excellent consultation, operations and after-care for each and leads a very active, productive life. She and her husband live on a retired teacher’s income. In the U.S., she would not have received the excellent care she got in Canada, nor could she afford to have those operations. She sent the following e-mail:

“I have been thinking of you so much lately as I fume about the way Canadian health care is pilloried in the American news. A recent poll showed that the number one thing people treasure in Canada is their health care system. Any health care system can be better, but coverage for all seems to be the least that a country can do for its people. I spoke to a doctor recently, a Canadian who was practicing in Colorado. He came back to Canada because he was practically going broke despite his supposedly high wages. The paperwork he had to deal with for many health providers was costing him so much time and office work that he was getting depressed. He also had to fudge on accurate information or his patients wouldn’t get coverage, which presented an ethical dilemma.”

Why is the U.S. the last “civilized country” on earth to deny health care for all? It is insane and immoral. Stories of Canadians (wealthy) crossing the border for better care in the U.S. are hypocritical lies. More Montanans are going north for health care and prescription drugs because of our failed system.

Bob Ream

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The U.S. spent $7,290 on health care for each person in 2007, 87 percent more than Canada’s $3,895, according to the latest OECD data. The U.S. also devoted the highest percentage of gross domestic product to health care, 16 percent, OECD numbers show. Canada’s expenditure was 10.1 percent.

Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer, according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations.

Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19 countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths.

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Here is a segment of his speech praising Obama to Conservative leaders last week:

50 years from today, Americans will revere the name Obama.  Because like his Canadian predecessors, he chose the tough responsibilities of national political leadership over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship that we see too much of in Canada and around the world today.

It’s throwing me off a bit, as I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever come close to agreeing with Mulroney on anything, though it appears this open declaration of love for universal health care is connected some kind of clash of egos between him and current Conservative leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (who won’t even weigh in on this issue at all).

And he is praising Obama who I am not quite as convinced is a visionary of healthcare with his public option.  But..still!

I think this really shows how mainstream an issue this can be – in Canada,  people from highly varied political perspectives recognize the value of universal healthcare.

To see some of the video of the speech on Canuck Politics, click here

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Physicians for a National Health Program has links to some of the key myths and has a link to the rest of the CHSRF’s myth buster series.   Some of the myths profiled and debunked include:  for-profit health equaling efficient health, private health reducing waiting times, ‘Communist’ Canadian health, etc…

link to the Mythbusters series

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Tommy Douglas on Future of Medicare (1983)
The ‘father’ of Canadian medicare talks about its value and the threats to it’s existence

Universal Health Care Message to Americans From Canadian Doctors & Health Care Experts
Former Saskatchewan Premier (State Governor) Roy Romanow and many others go over the value of a publicly financed health system.

Universal Health Care Message To Americans From Canada
A funny message to ‘my friends’ in the U.S. about universal health care and the truth about Canadian publicly funded health care. “The world is rooting for you.’

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