Recent comments

<blockquote>If you want to see what it would be like, look at any government run agency now, and that will give you a good overview of what we would be looking at!</blockquote> Please. Other commenters have already cited services our government performs well. Repeating that tired mantra gets you nothing. <blockquote>Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves if they would see what this country has become.</blockquote> Um...women, people who don't own property, and black people voting? <blockquote>Let's talk reform, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. </blockquote> On the contrary, there can be no real reform as long as we're stuck with this for-profit "baby." It, not government, ought to be "drowned in the bathtub."

Here is actual text from a report on Wait Times by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. You can download it yourself from their website. Ask what makes Canada different from the United States, and health care is sure to come up. Interestingly, though, Canadians and insured Americans are about equally likely to report unmet needs for health care in the past year.1 One in ten adults on both sides of the border did so in 2002–2003. (Rates are much higher for uninsured Americans.) But the leading reasons for access problems do diverge. In the United States, cost was the most common barrier, cited by just over half of those with unmet needs. In Canada, waiting for care was named as a barrier by 32% of those with access difficulties. This overall result, however, masks the variations in barriers to access for different types of services. Waits are the most common barrier named by seekers of specialist care who encounter difficulties. The same is true for those seeking non-emergency diagnostic testing and surgery. For routine and ongoing medical care, more mentioned difficulties getting an appointment than cited wait time. Likewise, the cost of getting help was the top barrier reported by Canadians with disabilities who had unmet needs for help with everyday activities. On the other hand, Canadian women who have not had a recent pap smear or mammogram are most likely to say that it was because they or their doctor didn't think one was necessary or because they haven' gotten around to it. So the CIHI reports shows that American are waiting for health care because of the cost, while Canadians are waiting mainly for non-emergency, or non-essential procedures.