5 myths about Canadian health care - part 2

In part 1 of this post we let peer-reviewed research explode two of the common myths about Canadian health care. In spite of what "everybody knows," Canadians are not flocking to the USA for health care and there are currently more doctors coming into Canada than leaving Canada. Now let's look at the remaining myths:

Myth no. 3: Canada rations health care; that’s why hip replacements and cataract surgeries happen faster in the United States.

"When people want to demonize Canada’s health care system — and other single-payer systems, for that matter — they always end up going after rationing, and often hip replacements in particular."

"Take Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, for example. A couple of years ago he took to the House floor to tell his colleagues:"

[Readers may recognize the now-familiar Missouri congressman who is now running for the Senate. That's right, he's the "you can't get pregnant if you're 'legitimately raped'" guy. I swear, I did not even know he was quoted in this article until I began writing this post earlier today, but his scientific wisdom sure does seem to get around. Here's what he had to say:]

“I just hit 62, and I was just reading that in Canada [if] I got a bad hip I wouldn’t be able to get that hip replacement that [Rep. Dan Lungren] got, because I’m too old! I’m an old geezer now and it’s not worth a government bureaucrat to pay me to get my hip fixed.”

"This has been debunked so often, it’s tiring. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, concluded: “At least 63 percent of hip replacements performed in Canada last year [2008] ... were on patients age 65 or older.” And more than 1,500 of those, it turned out, were on patients over 85."

Myth #4: Canada has long wait times because it has a single-payer system.

"The wait times that Canada might experience are not caused by its being a single-payer system."

"Wait times aren’t like cancer. We know what causes wait times; we know how to fix them. Spend more money."

"In 1966, Canada implemented a single-payer health care system, which is also known as Medicare. Since then, as a country, Canadians have made a conscious decision to hold down costs. One of the ways they do that is by limiting supply, mostly for elective things, which can create wait times. Their outcomes are otherwise comparable to ours."

"Please understand, the wait times could be overcome. Canadians could spend more. They don’t want to. We can choose to dislike wait times in principle, but they are a byproduct of Canada’s choice to be fiscally conservative."

"Yes, they chose this. In a rational world, those who are concerned about health care costs and what they mean to the economy might respect that course of action. But instead, they attack the system."

Myth #5: Canada rations health care; the United States doesn’t.

"This one’s a little bit tricky. The truth is, Canada may “ration” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost."

"An 11-country survey carried out in 2010 by the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based health policy foundation, found that adults in the United States are by far the most likely to go without care because of cost. In fact, 42 percent of the Americans surveyed did not express confidence that they would be able to afford health care if seriously ill."

"Further, about a third of the Americans surveyed reported that, in the preceding year, they didn’t go to the doctor when sick, didn’t get recommended care when needed, didn’t fill a prescription or skipped doses of medications because of cost."

"Finally, about one in five of the Americans surveyed had struggled to pay or were unable to pay their medical bills in the preceding year....And remember: We’re spending way more on health care than any other country, and for all that money we’re getting at best middling results."

So, why is this all important? It's important because we have something to learn from all the other advanced nations, including Canada, who manage to get better health care outcomes at half the per capita cost of the USA.

We're fighting tooth and nail over how to best pay for our health care system. The truth is that our system itself is the problem. No matter how we attempt to pay for it, it's too expensive and doesn't produce good results.

The rest of the developed world is running lab experiments for us. We could emulate the Taiwanese who in 1995 decided to look at all these other systems and design one for themselves based on the best parts of everyone else's systems. For crying out loud, if the Taiwanese could do it why can't we?