Again, I have lived there, and the numbers seem on the upper end of plausible for non-essential surgery like breast reduction, but extremely bogus for anything important. A day or two was normal for routine treatments.
The official government figures, where about half of patients get care within 24 hours, and about 90% within 48, are much more in line with my experience.
I know someone personally who had to wait months to see somebody. He said screw it and came to the states for care instead (dual citizenship). He was able to see a specialist immediately and found out he was grossly misdiagnosed.
And I know people in the USA who have gone to Canada or India for medical tourism because they could not get good care at an affordable price in the USA. But these are anecdotes.
When you look at the stats aggregated by OECD, Canada is indeed among the worst public health services in the developed world, but it still provides better care to the median earner than the US health system, at half the aggregated cost per capita.
The governments stats basically have to be kept. Running the system requires all of the necessary data to already be collected for other purposes, and their stats are drawn from that.
The stats you provide are collected by an institute looking to further their ideology. They come from a far smaller data pool,and their collection method seems rather suspect. For example, they're asking the actual practitioner rather than anyone involved in scheduling.
> The stats you provide are collected by an institute looking to further their ideology.
Proof?
> The governments stats basically have to be kept. Running the system requires all of the necessary data to already be collected for other purposes, and their stats are drawn from that.
You trust a government entity to accurately report data that's not in it's best interest? When has that ever happened?
I agree, my stats are in line with what I and my family have experienced, and yours are not.
Combine that with multiple agencies such as Health Canada and OECD which have measured wait times an order of magnitude lower than you cited, I am not sure what else to say.
And why is his data more legitimate than my data? And don't bring up the so called "bias" because of factors unrelated to the study. Every study has bias, including the numbers ori_b is touting.
The Fraser institute, which published this study, has a right wing bias and is funded by the Koch Brothers. It seeks to displace the public system in Canada with private healthcare modelled after the US. While they claim independence and give their research away freely, one should be aware of their interests.
Read again. The original posters claim was that the study was funded by foreign money that pushes an agenda, not that it was invalid.
As to the invalidity:
The fact that I have never waited for more than a couple of days for treatment in over 25 years, and neither had anyone I know (with 2 exceptions, both of which were for elective surgery like breast reduction surgery) does imply that, at best, their median measurement is measuring a specific niche, rather than general treatment.
Combine that with the fact that multiple agencies have measures wait times as being an order of magnitude lower than your source, and yes, I do think your numbers are invalid.
The official government figures, where about half of patients get care within 24 hours, and about 90% within 48, are much more in line with my experience.