Five Myths about the Canadian Health Care system from AARP

MYTH #1: CANADIANS ARE FLOCKING TO THE USA TO GET MEDICAL CARE

The most comprehensive study on this topic — it employed three different methodologies, all with solid rationales behind them — was published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs.

How Many Canadians Use the U.S. Health System?

Do not come to the US for care: 99.39%
Come to US for care electively: 0.5%
Use the US for emergency care: 0.11%



MYTH#2: DOCTORS IN CANADA ARE FLOCKING TO THE USA TO PRACTICE

it’s just not so. Consider this :


Physicians Very satisfied and satisfied Practicing Medicine by Nation


89% New Zealand
89% Norway
88% Netherlands
81% United Kingdom
79% Sweden
77% Italy
75% CANADA
76% France
64% UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Myth #3: CANADA RATIONS HEALTH CARE: THAT'S WHY HIP REPLACEMENTS AND CATARACT SURGERIES HAPPEN FASTER IN THE UNITED STATES

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

“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.

The bottom line: Canada doesn’t deny hip replacements to older people.

But there’s more.

Know who gets most of the hip replacements in the United States? Older people.

Know who pays for care for older people in the United States? Medicare.

Know what Medicare is? A single-payer system.


Myth #4: CANADA HAS LONG WAIT TIMES BECAUSE IT HAS A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM.

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. Currently Canada Spends half, per capita, of what the USA spends on health care. 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 USA DOES NOT

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. That was more than twice the percentage found in any of the other 10 countries.

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 feel free to have a discussion about the relative merits of the U.S. and Canadian health care systems. Just stick to the facts.







http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/go ... are-System

+1

Thank you!

+100
Thanks John

johnthomasmacdonald wrote:This has been debunked so often, it’s tiring.

But you have to do it because the alternative is to let fear rule the game. It is very tiring to constantly debunk the lies, half-lies and distortions, but unfortunately too many people believe this stuff without even a tiny fact-check!

The "news" is anything but news these days, and I don't care if the station leans left, right, whatever. They have for DECADES been phrasing the 'news' to 'help' people think one way or another. Take a good journalism class (even high school level) and you'll see how easy and prevalent this is.

Keep up the good work!

Mis-information on both sides of any hotly contested public policy debate (i.e. Health Care) is often generated by people with "motivation". Insurance companies, Doctor's organizations, political parties, etc.

It is up to us to try and not succumb to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) that these groups try to engender.

The world as we know it will probably not end if Obamacare is implemented, and, if Obamacare is tossed out, most children, old people and sick folks will probably not be tossed out in the street to die. Maybe we can start from there?

I would not assume anything - you just have to walk down the (back) streets of any large city to see how many people have been tossed out, many of them veterans. Shame on the people who made that happen.

Sigh. I know better, but every once in a great while I screw up and post on a thread like this. I am out!

I live in Canada in the Province of Manitoba. All my cpap therapy is covered by our Provincial Health Plan including all equipment needed. We get a new mask and all accessories every 12 months as well. Tough to get any better.

But, but ,but he's black! Having breakfast at the local place this morning and the old guy that believes everything he reads on the internet is going on about Obama Care (ACA) and how the guberment (sic) should stay out of peoples healthcare. Normally I ignore him, but today I turned around and asked him if he meant Medicare? Thought his head would explode.

I wonder if your humor is maybe just a bit too subtle for some people here... if maybe you could have expressed it another way?

hobbs wrote:But, but ,but he's black! Having breakfast at the local place this morning and the old guy that believes everything he reads on the internet is going on about Obama Care (ACA) and how the guberment (sic) should stay out of peoples healthcare. Normally I ignore him, but today I turned around and asked him if he meant Medicare? Thought his head would explode.

Only HALF.......from what I've heard. But, the "facts" regarding his birth are apparently rather questionable, too.


Den

.

" . . . humor too subtle."
--Just a nice way of saying some people are a tad slow?
Yes, I noticed that some time ago.
(see above post)

I so wanted to delete it...

There was a book published recently, written by a former Cigna marketing executive. He spent a lot of time talking about how much Cigna spends to convince us that we have the best healthcare and best healthcare insurance in the world, so don't you dare change it *smile*. Anyone who goes after this information proactively rather than taking what they're being fed by our for-profit healthcare insurance companies and all the other people with an interest in maintaining the status quo, can find out what the real situation is.

On the other hand, I was reading about a poll done recently, where only 63% of the people polled knew that healthcare insurance is mandatory next year. So we're apparently not doing a great job of making sure that everyone's informed about this four-year old law. And that's at least part of the problem moving forward, and explains why a lot of people are willing (apparently) to believe the lies and misinformation that's out there filling the information vacuum.

Since you asked for it, as someone who lived 35 Miles from the Canadian line for 25 years and worked for a Canadian Company let me give you a factual perspective you missed, Myth by Myth.

MYTH #1: CANADIANS ARE FLOCKING TO THE USA TO GET MEDICAL CARE

Every 5 years all of our (US) Hospitals located just south of the border with Manitoba and Saskatchewan would fill up for a month or two with patients refered from Canadian facilities because the Canadian Nurses were out on strike. Correctly stated this Myth would read CANADIANS ARE PERIODICALLY DRIVEN TO THE USA TO GET MEDICAL CARE.

MYTH#2: DOCTORS IN CANADA ARE FLOCKING TO THE USA TO PRACTICE

Myth is false, probably an AARP talking point. Though our Doc during that time was a Canadian, today what Doc from the 1st world in his right mind would relocate here given the US's legal and political environment.

Myth #3: CANADA RATIONS HEALTH CARE:

Absolutely True. In fact there is a case wending it's way through the Canadian Courts over rationing by long waits (for example for Heart Surgery). As a matter of fact when I worked for ALSTOM Hydro Pwr my first Supervisor who was in congestive heart failure and went back to Canada for that "free" care, was still waiting for surgery two years later and I know for a fact that if he'd gone to any of the US Hospitals within an hours drive from work on any morning they would have had him in the OR by mid-afternoon of the same day.

More personally, when we lived up north my wife needed micro surgery for Endrimetriosis so we got busy one week and had that surgery the following week, the wait at that time in Canada for the same surgery was 7 years. Considering that Endrimetriosis was impacting her fertility and she was 35, a 7 year delay probably meant no children. F**k that!

Myth #4: CANADA HAS LONG WAIT TIMES BECAUSE IT HAS A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM.

Oh so true, see my response to Myth #3 above.

Myth #5: CANADA RATIONS HEALTH CARE: THE USA DOES NOT

The truth is, Canada may “ration” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost.
vs.
The truth is, Canada “rations” by making people wait for some things, but here in the United States we also “ration” — by cost. (there fixed)

The premise of this Myth is nothing more than an AARP talking point. That said I have no real disagreement with the response provided. The fact is that ALL medical delivery systems "ration" due to cost including Canada, meaning if you make enough peope wait long enough some of them die save system resources. The realty is at this point in time Canada is both spending less money per capita than the US does AND is rationing more aggressively. In 1970 Buddy Rommer then Governor of Colorado is credited with saying that (and I'm paraphrasing here) "given existing Human ingenuity and inventiveness, sooner or later we were going to develop (effective) procedures and treatments that were so expensive that society simply can't afford them" and he dated that moment to the mid 1960's when the Insurance industry successfully petioned Congress to pay for Kidney Dialysis because the Insurance Companies couldn't afford it.

It's going to be interesting to observe the effect on Canadian costs if the legal challenge referenced in # 3 above is unheld by the Canadian Courts. The thrust of that legal challenge specifically addresses the long waits for very costly procedures like open heart surgery. Given that the Cardiac Wing in most Hospitals is the largest expense the Hospital has, a Court mandated reduction in waiting time for Heart Surgery in Canada WILL dramatically increase the Single Payer cost structure.