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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric who wrote (11632)	11/20/2009 10:43:11 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 42652

Fraser Inst. says Canada spending more for less care 2009-11-20 14:13 ET - Street Wire by Nadeem Esmail of the Fraser Institute The Canadian Institute for Health Information released the latest government health care spending figures Thursday showing that between 1993 and 2009, inflation-adjusted provincial health expenditures per person in Canada rose by 47 per cent, and 35 per cent since 2000. Meanwhile, the Fraser Institute's recent report on hospital wait times showed that wait times for medically necessary care in Canada fell in 2009 compared with 2008. Some people will no doubt point to these results and proclaim that all of the spending and benchmarking, targeting, and guaranteeing of wait times that have been going on in recent years have produced this improvement for Canadians. A closer look at the facts tells a very different story. For starters, consider that while the total median wait time for physical treatments in 2009 was down more than two weeks from the 18.3-week peak reached in 2007, it was nevertheless virtually no shorter than the wait time in 2000-2001. The reality is that since 2000-2001, wait times have increased and decreased within a two-week range. In addition, wait times are significantly longer than they were back in 1993 when the total median wait time was 9.3 weeks. What makes this wait times performance all the more disappointing is Canada's health spending record over this time frame. Canadians spent 35 per cent more on health care per person while experiencing virtually no reduction in wait times. Between 1993 and 2009, Canadians spent 47 per cent more on health care per person while wait times went up 73 per cent. Do not be fooled into thinking that perhaps we are just not ramping up spending enough. In 2005, Canada maintained the developed world's second-most-expensive universal access health care system on an age-adjusted basis. And yet, the evidence shows that Canadians endure some of the longest wait times for medically necessary health care in the developed world. At the same time, citizens of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg and Switzerland receive wait-list-free, universal access to health care services without spending more than Canadians. Recent statistics on surgical volumes published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information further confirm the troubling state of dysfunction in Canada's health care system. Specifically, the Canadian Institute for Health Information found (not including Quebec) that in 2007-2008, "Age-standardized rates of surgery outside the priority areas (hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, cardiac revascularization and cancer surgery) are about the same as they were in 2004 2005." Within the priority areas, rates of surgery climbed by 7 per cent between 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, and then essentially stopped growing to 2007-2008. In addition, physician consultations for eye surgery and orthopaedic surgery did not increase between 2003-2004 and 2006-2007 while cardiac surgery consultations showed only a small increase. Let us not forget that these non-increases occurred at the same time as provincial health spending grew 9 per cent per Canadian after inflation. What are Canada's governments doing about this mess? Not much it seems. Over the past few years, Canada's governments have been ramping up spending faster than their ability to afford it and focusing on defining a limit to how long Canadians should wait for care through benchmarks and guarantees. These limits are troublingly long. According to the benchmark wait times announced jointly by the federal, provincial and territorial governments in December, 2005, being treated within 26 weeks from the time a Canadian sees a specialist to the time he receives treatment for hip or knee replacement surgery is reasonable. So is being treated within 26 weeks for level three cardiac bypass surgery, or 16 weeks for cataract surgery for patients at high risk, or four weeks for radiation therapy. Notably, many of the provincial wait times guarantees announced in 2007 are much longer than even these generous targets -- for example some provinces are guaranteeing eight weeks for radiation therapy. There has been virtually no talk of understanding how seven developed nations deliver wait-list-free universal access to health care services while spending the same or less than Canada and adopting a similar approach in this country. Wait times are indeed down in Canada from where they were in recent years. And this is no doubt a good thing for those in the queue waiting for their medically necessary care. The problem is that queues remain far too long in Canada despite the very large amount of money taxpayers are being required to pull out of their pockets for health care. There is nothing to applaud here. stockwatch.comCURRENT-1664479&symbol=CURRENT&news_region=C