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by Sharlin
2515 days ago
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Oh puh-lease. Even a trivial googling tells me that Canada has longer waiting times than most other comparable countries with single-payer healthcare. And those waiting times? About half of GP visits are same- or next day appointments, with 20% of Canadians having to wait for a week. As for specialists, the median waiting time is roughly four weeks. [1] So those numbers are definitely not optimal compared to many other countries, but your claim about the average being almost 20 weeks is completely ridiculous. You're entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. And if your opinions are based on your own facts, don't expect to be taken seriously in any reasonably educated company. Now, according to [2], the US fares well on two metrics: waiting time to see a specialist and waiting time to elective surgeries. Unsurprisingly, both of these are conditional on already having gotten a referral and/or having decided to book the appointment or operation. That is, most of the time, if you have decided you can afford it! Indeed, cost barriers were by far the highest in the US, as measured by the fraction of people who skipped treatment or medication due to cost. [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/3251833/canada-has-some-of-the-lo... [2] https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/text-altern... |
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I've needed to go see my doctor - usually I can't get a same day appointment. Sometimes I can get a 'next day' - usually it's "pick some time in the next week or two". Am I now "having to wait"? It's been this way for me my entire life in the US (more than 40 years I can remember), across different states, political leadership and insurance companies.
I needed a procedure by a specialist last year. Regular checkup produced "this is serious - I'm referring to you ABC for procedure X - we need to get this done ASAP". It was still more than 2 weeks before the specialist could see me. There was an option of seeing someone else sooner, but it would have meant a 2 hour drive. That was possible but very inconvenient, and we decided that the 2 week period was acceptable vs the alternative.
Does everyone else in the US get same day service for everything they need, and I've just been wholly unlucky my entire life in multiple regions of the country? Or, do we actually have 'wait times' just like everyone else?