Universal healthcare here, hyena penises on Unfogged.... is it backwards day?

mrh: That is precisely what happened. The hyena post was supposed to be here, but I posted it to Unfogged by mistake. Then when I went to delete it, it had already received a comment.

It's not nice to mention a post on hyena penises and not provide a link.

Sorry.

I don't understand why you wouldn't deliberately post about hyena penises at Unfogged.

What waits there are in Canada tend to be due to a shortage of doctors, not budget-induced quotas. There's not enough doctors to perform, say, knee replacement surgeries quickly. This is (anecdotally) due to doctors and nurses moving to the U.S. to take higher paid work.

So, universal health care might result in waiting lists here, but perhaps not to the same extent (I doubt our doctors are all going to relocate to England.)

On the other hand, if you need to go to the doctor in Canada, you go to the doctor or the nice clinic, not the emergency room. I haven't seen a study, but I imagine the emergency room costs are much, much less there than here.

Prescriptions we might be screwed on. Canada gets a deal with the insurance companies because the companies have a 300 million person base just to the South whom they can gouge for prices first. I can't see the same prescription plan working without stifling innovation, but there might be an alternative.

I generally agree with the overall point made at Health Policy, however a few of the supporting arguments are sloppy at best:

For example: Limiting a study to (mostly small, rural) hospitals near the border gives a false impression: Just as patients in the US who can afford it travel to The Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins, those are the same hospitals sought out by Canadians who can afford top-notch care.

I think the best argument against "Universal coverage will decrease the quality of healthcare" is to point out that all the countries with better life expectancies and infant mortality rates have universal healthcare access.

And to point out that if the French can do it, we can do it better.

Carla - on prescription (and general healthcare) costs here, you seem to be missing the scam, which goes like this:

Our tax dollars fund medical research at universities and research hospitals. The universities patent their discoveries. Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies then buy the patents and sell the technology back to us as if our taxes had nothing to do with developing it in the first place.

For example: Limiting a study to (mostly small, rural) hospitals near the border gives a false impression: Just as patients in the US who can afford it travel to The Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins, those are the same hospitals sought out by Canadians who can afford top-notch care.

The study wasn't limited to hospitals just near the border, it covered all hospitals in states adjacent to Canada, as those would be the most likely destinations of Canadians seeking care in the US. It also covered a sampling of hospitals elsewhere ("Finally, information from a sample of "America's Best Hospitals" revealed very few Canadians being seen for the magnet referral services they provide.")

Additionally, any Canadians wealthy enough to afford pay-as-you go at the Mayo clinic would probably be fairly small in number.

I'd have to wonder about the mental state of anyone who would want to go to the US to pay, say, $20,000 or so for gall bladder surgery when they could get for free at home.

Erik, not forgetting it, but I don't see how it's relevant. However the drug companies fund research now, they're going to deal differently with the U.S. and Canada.

You can argue that they shouldn't be getting the patent protections because taxes help pay for the research, but I don't see that happening any time soon.