The Rest of the Story

Moore: There are no excessive waits for care in Canada.

Canadian Supreme Court: The waits are unconscionable.

Michael Moore attempts to refute conservative claims that Canada has excessive waiting lists for treatment. As proof there is no rationing by waiting in Canada, Michael Moore humorously asks some patients in a Canadian ER how long they had to wait.  Just 20 or 45 minutes was the reply.  Apparently Michael Moore found the only ER with no waiting in Canada. 

The reality is that rationing by waiting is so bad that a Canadian patient and a Canadian physician recently brought suite to allow patients to pay privately for services they could not obtain from the public health care system. A businessman from Montreal, named George Zeliotis, waited a year for hip replacement surgery. Physician Dr. Jacques Chaoulli wanted to charge for private medical services but was prevented by Quebec law. The Canadian Supreme Court found that banning private insurance for medical services was unconstitutional because the public system has could not guarantee patients timely access to those services.

Across Canada the wait to see a specialist is nearly nine weeks while the wait for treatment after seeing a specialist is another nine weeks.  The comparable figure in Saskatchewan is 28.5 weeks and 32 weeks in New Brunswick.   The wait varies by type of treatment.  Someone needing orthopedic treatments waits about 40 weeks on average.  The median wait for an MRI is 10 weeks.  That stretches to 28 weeks for residents of Newfoundland. A CT scan that takes more than four weeks (on average) across Canada would take nine weeks in Prince Edward Island. An Ultrasound scan that takes four weeks across Canada would take eight weeks in Prince Edward Island and Manitoba.  As of 2005, there were only 12 PET scanners across Canada compared to 100 times that many in the United States.  Of the 12 PET scanners in Canada, only three were available for clinical use in the public health program.

Top court strikes down Quebec private health-care ban

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/06/09/newscoc-health050609.html

See "Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada" http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=863

Seventy-nine-year-old retired engineer, Kurt Berger, decided that India was the best place for him to get knee replacement surgery rather than wait a year for "free care" in Canada.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4562670