You'd need to be very careful here about definitons of 'critical'.
Does it mean life threatening or merely painful? :-( Does it mean the
time between diagnosis and effective treatment and amelioration or
between diagnosis and remedial surgery? And of course, what is meant
by a 'procedure' - prescribing an effective medication or surgery? O
either?
I don't hear stories of Canadians dying in droves while waiting for
critical surgery - which they would if your median of 124 days was
correct, surely unless excellent treatment was available during the
wait.
If 'critical' is defined by an HMO's policy in the US then I still be
worried.
What's the waiting time if you're on welfare or otherwise uninsured?
It isn't good out here but I suspect that it's worse in the US. And
no-one is expected to exhaust their life savings just because they're
uninsured and have some assets.
Oh, and the curmudgeon in me offers that health care is so expensive
in the US because of the murkin propensity to litigate - insurance
premiums must be horrendous. My local semi-rural GP (near Melbourne)
has stopped delivering occasional babies because he can't afford the
$50K per year that Ob/Gyn. has to stump up, given that people are no
longer prepared to accept the simple fact that some babies are born
damaged. Following the constant input of murkin culture in medical
and legal dramas (I have to teach my students that the emergency
number is 000 here, not 911) we've adopted a 'find someone to blame
and sue them' culture as well to some extent. Fortunately the courts
here are far less sympathetic to emotional demands than they seem to
be there - but because of their data input (TV habits) people still
assume that there are lots of multi-million dollar settlements here
when the reality is very different.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 25/02/2007, at 1:30 AM, Mark Dapoz wrote:
> Looking closer you'll
> see the median waiting time for critial procedures is 1.2 days in
> the US
> while in Canada it's 124 days!
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