If CANADIAN Health Care is so very wonderful and of great benefit, why are HOSPITALS, CLINICS and DOCTORS in the northern tier of the USA filled with citizens of CANADA frantically seeking competent and TIMELY health care? I do NOT see Americans flocking to CANADA for health care. Neither are the airports crowded with ailing Americans flying to Europe, Cuba, and other wonderful places to gain life saving and giving care.
They're not.
There’s no evidence that the number of Canadians who cross the border to receive care in the U.S. is statistically significant. The definitive study was done nearly 10 years ago for Health Affairs, and it found “the number of Canadians routinely coming across the border seeking health care appears to be relatively small, indeed infinitesimal when compared with the amount of care provided by their own system.” In analyzing the data, they focused on “leading-technology” fancy procedures unavailable in Canada, medical campuses easier to access by Canadians based on geography, American care centers with sterling reputations, and Canadians or Americans who live part of the year in both countries. The results yielded… bupkis.
And there’s a certain leap of economic logic that most people fail to take into account when they buy into the myth of Canadian refugees fleeing their universal health care system: “Our results should probably not, on reflection, be surprising. Prices for U.S. health care services are extraordinarily high, compared with those in all other countries, and this financial barrier is magnified by the extraordinary strength of the U.S. dollar.”
http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/traveling_for_care_--_outside_the_us
do NOT see Americans flocking to CANADA for health care. Neither are the airports crowded with ailing Americans flying to Europe, Cuba, and other wonderful places to gain life saving
updated 8:50 a.m. ET, Wed., Oct . 28, 2009
NEW YORK - These are heady days for the medical tourism industry. With U.S. healthcare prices spiraling upward, more and more insurers and individuals are looking abroad for treatment. By some estimates, 650,000 Americans will check into foreign hospitals from Mexico to Thailand this year.
As UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research determined in a recent study, “at least 952,000 California adults – 488,000 of them described by the study as Mexican immigrants and about a quarter as non-Latino whites – head south annually for their medical, dental and prescription services.” And why are they going, aside from the obvious concerns of cost and lack of insurance? See if this resonates with you: “Among non-Latino whites, prescription drugs were the most common medical service obtained in Mexico.” Yeah, that’s right. We have American citizens going to Mexico to take advantage of their health care.
http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/traveling_for_care_--_outside_the_us
I did not say Canadian health care was perfect or even great. There are a lot of problems with it. I simply said that the article posted was full of errors and misconceptions.
One of the reasons Canadian health care works as well as it does is that Canadians are free to seek health care in the US. The health care authorities in Canada are also able to contract for care for patients in the US, and they do.
That said, people like yourself should spend less time attacking Canadian health care more time opposing what your leaders are trying to foist on you. Pelosi care is not anything near Canadian health care. You should be so lucky. They are planning SOVIET STYLE or CUBAN STYLE health care for you. It won't work anywhere near as well as the Canadian system.