Today’s post was engendered by a query from a friend who felt that in recent social media discussion I did not give a fair hearing to two Canadians. The issue there was my contention that Canadians as a nation have better healthcare than does the USA at substantially less cost. Two people stated that they were Canadians who felt forced to come to the USA for treatment because they could obtain care here unavailable to them in Canada.
We’re just a little over a month from mid-term elections in the USA, and since I strongly believe that the most important issue we have to face is healthcare, I hope my readers will agree that it’s worth spending some time on this.
There is no doubt that the USA has fabulously good healthcare resources, nor is there any question that people from all over the world do come here for treatment. In some cases that might be because the treatment is unavailable in their home countries, in others it’s because their home countries aren’t willing to provide it fast enough to suit them. We occasionally do learn of people who lose their lives while awaiting treatment. For those who have the financial resources, excellent care can be found in the USA, often with a shorter wait than in other countries.
The problems with healthcare in the USA include the fact that almost ten percent of the population lacks any kind of healthcare insurance, and a much higher percentage has inadequate insurance or access to those resources. In my home state of Tennessee, two thirds of the counties have not a single hospital. There is not a single obstetrical practice in most of rural Tennessee. Obstetricians are telling pregnant women that they should seek a place to live in one of the metro areas for their last month of pregnancy because with a challenging birth issue they could lose the child or their own life. This is not some sort of exaggerated warning, the USA has the worst record for infant mortality among the three dozen western democracies, and Tennessee just barely beats out most of the other southern US states for the worst infant mortality rate among the states.
Returning to the comparison with Canada, where in that country do people not have access to excellent healthcare? The answer is nowhere, because the Canadian healthcare system extends throughout the country. How many Canadian women are coming to the USA because they can’t find obstetrical care in Canada? None. How do the statistics for infant and maternal mortality compare between Canada and the USA? Canada’s are better.
The entire issue that some Canadians might be coming to the USA for healthcare is bogus. Why do I say that? Simply stated, how many Americans go to other countries for healthcare? One estimate based on reliable sources puts the number of Americans going to Mexico for healthcare at 1.2 *million* per year. Does that mean Mexico has better healthcare than the USA? Even more people—1.4M per year travel to the Asian destinations of South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The most commonly mentioned reason is cost, but a close runner up is less waiting time.
So, I apologize that I did not take the time to reply to the two Canadians who posted on my site. But hopefully I’ve remedied that error here. To summarize, the way to evaluate national healthcare systems is not to consider individual cases or people who have a grudge, whether legitimate or not. Evaluation should be based on studies performed by healthcare agencies and other specialists and based on reliable statistics. Using those criteria, the USA has the most expensive healthcare system in the industrialized world, and delivers some of the worst outcomes.
