Boo Radley
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Whose, "we"? You got a mouse in your pocket?
CBC News - Health - Wait times for surgery in Canada at all-time high: study
CBC?
other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks
Read more: CBC News - Health - Wait times for surgery in Canada at all-time high: study
Let's do an overview:
One complaint about both the U.S. and Canadian health care systems is waiting times, whether for a specialist, major elective surgery, such as hip replacement, or specialized treatments, such as radiation for breast cancer; wait times in each country are affected by various factors. In the United States, access to health care is primarily determined by whether a person has access to funding to pay for treatment and by the availability of services in the area and by willingness of the provider to deliver service at the price set by the insurer. In Canada the wait time is set according the availability of services in the area and by the relative need of the person needing treatment.
(let the bolded parts sink in just a little bit)
Snip
In a 2009 survey of physician appointment wait times in the United States, the average wait time for an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon in country as a whole was 17 days. In Dallas, Texas the wait was 45 days (the longest wait being 365 days). Nationwide across the U.S. the average wait time to see a family doctor was 20 days. The average wait time to see a family practitioner in Los Angeles, California was 59 days and in Boston, Massachusetts it was 63 days.[57]
Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 42% of Canadians waited 2 hours or more in the emergency room, vs. 29% in the U.S.; 57% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, vs. 23% in the U.S., but Canadians had more chances of getting medical attention at nights, or on weekends and holidays than their American neighbors without the need to visit an ER (54% compared to 61%).[58] Statistics from the Canadian free market think tank Fraser Institute in 2008 indicate that the average wait time between the time when a general practitioner refers a patient for care and the receipt of treatment was almost four and a half months in 2008, roughly double what it had been 15 years before.[59]
Comparison of the health care systems in Canada and the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia