Yet it is hard to find a Canadian who would trade their healthcare plan for ours
The simple reason, they don't know anything else. They do know that if they want immediate and superior care, they have to go South of their border.
The care is very inferior. You have a handful of excellent research hospitals, but your county hospitals are the pits. Unless you have the big bucks for the top hospitals you're screwed.
I could go to the United States and get a new knee for $50,000 next week. I can wait a few months and get one for $0. I'm not in pain, I don't walk with a cane. I get a pain every now and again, and I can't play tennis or dance - side to side motion is shot. So call me crazy, but I'm going to keep the $50,000 and get it done for free. I miss dancing but I'll miss the $50,000 even more.
According to your profile, you live in Wisconsin.
Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2019 Report
— Published on December 10, 2019
[...]
This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 20.9 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 19.8 weeks reported in 2018. This year’s wait time is just shy of the longest wait time recorded in this survey’s history (21.2 weeks in 2017) and is 124% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.
There is a great deal of variation in the total waiting time faced by patients across the provinces. Ontario reports the shortest total wait—16.0 weeks—while Prince Edward Island reports the longest—49.3 weeks. There is also a great deal of variation among specialties. Patients wait longest between a GP referral and orthopaedic surgery (39.1 weeks), while those waiting for medical oncology begin treatment in 4.4 weeks.
The total wait time that patients face can be examined in two consecutive segments.
From referral by a general practitioner to consultation with a specialist. The waiting time in this segment increased from 8.7 weeks in 2018 to 10.1 weeks in 2019. This wait time is 173% longer than in 1993, when it was 3.7 weeks. The shortest waits for specialist consultations are in Quebec (7.2 weeks) while the longest occur in Prince Edward Island (28.8 weeks).
From the consultation with a specialist to the point at which the patient receives treatment. The waiting time in this segment decreased from 11.0 weeks in 2018 to 10.8 weeks this year. This wait time is 92% longer than in 1993 when it was 5.6 weeks, and about three and one-half weeks longer than what physicians consider to be clinically “reasonable” (7.2 weeks). The shortest specialist-to-treatment waits are found in Ontario (8.0 weeks), while the longest are in Prince Edward Island (20.5 weeks).
It is estimated that, across the 10 provinces, the total number of procedures for which people are waiting in 2019 is 1,062,286. This means that, assuming that each person waits for only one procedure, 2.9% of Canadians are waiting for treatment in 2019. The proportion of the population waiting for treatment varies from a low of 1.7% in Quebec to a high of 5.8% in Nova Scotia. It is important to note that physicians report that only about 12.1% of their patients are on a waiting list because they requested a delay or postponement.
Patients also experience significant waiting times for various diagnostic technologies across the provinces. This year, Canadians could expect to wait 4.8 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) scan, 9.3 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and 3.4 weeks for an ultrasound.
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