"Everybody Knows" Is Not a Credible Source on Canadian Health Care

Canadian health care has a tough time of it on Fox News, crappy Conservatives for Patient Rights commercials and the like.  It tends to be based on… well, not much other than conventional thinking, or the old traditional “Everybody knows…”  Here’s a hint:  in this interconnected age where hard numbers are a Google search away, and people with life experience in a health care system can be easily emailed or Skyped, if someone has to resort to citing “everybody knows” as a source, chances are they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m prompted to write this because of a comment by reader Judy Gibson on another post.  During the election of 1992, George H. W. Bush would say, “If you think government run health care is so great, talk to a Canadian.”  Well, OK, don’t mind if I do…

"I'm a Canadian citizen and a typical one…. I'll be seventy next month and I am fully covered by our 'socialist' health system. When I looked after my husband's relatives in the UK when they were ill in the 1960s and 70s the UK National Health System covered everything--including my own health care.

"Yesterday I had a bone scan; in June I am to have testing for osteoporosis. My husband has chronic kidney disease and soon will go on dialysis, which is free, as is his care by specialists. I hope to give him a kidney; if accepted, we will undergo surgery and followup care which are free. Fifteen years ago my husband had a pacemaker implanted because his heart stopped twice, and he has atrial fibrillation and PVCs; that pacemaker, its installation, and the second one nine years later were free. My mother had Parkinson's disease and a rare form of skin cancer and two hip surgeries; all were free. My sister had a mastectomy; free. My younger daughter goes into anaphylactic shock if she eats peanuts; each hospital visit, doctors appointments, etc. are free. My brother-in-law has congestive heart failure and lung disease; treatments are free.

"As a result, we are a healthy family and have all survived traumas of every description; people have died of old age, in their eighties. My aunt was 91 when she died. Don't give me that 'baloney' about socialized medicine. You should be so lucky!"

Indeed we should, Judy.  And in case you think that one family doesn’t make a trend, here are the numbers to back it up.  Canada beats the U.S. in life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity, and spend less than half of what we do per capita on health care.  Oh, and they cover everyone while we let 50 million citizens slip through the cracks.  The most damning failure, cited by Rick Scott and Bill O’Reilly alike, is that the Canadian system experiences longer wait-times for elective procedures, like knee replacement surgery.  As I’ve mentioned before, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine took this bogeyman head on.  They found that, yes, the surgeries took about five weeks longer in Canada.  They also found that patient satisfaction for the procedures was near identical -- 85.3% in the U.S., 83.5% for Canada.  So much for unbearable wait times, eh?

They weren’t able to do the follow-up study on the effects on health and patient satisfaction between Americans and Canadians who were denied elective surgery because they have no insurance.  They couldn’t find a Canadian to participate.

So yes, please do talk to a Canadian.  But don’t take “everybody knows” as a reliable source, and don’t take those who cite it seriously.

(Photo credit:  Ian Muttoo on Flickr.)