#1Oct 19th, 2005
Last week a little post of mine on frustration with US health care made some noise --
and also here --
I have to admit I was taken by suprise that my bitching got so much attention.
Much of that attention demanded that I give proof for my accusations! Well, if you read the post closely you'd see I wasn't making any claims except the simple fact that our health system has its problems, waiting being one of them. But today I'm going to give all those naysayers some satisfaction by debunking another huge myth about the perils of Canadian medicine: that many thousands of desperate Canadians cross the border every year seeking medical care because of unsatisfactory care at home, be it long waits, lack of new technology, or [insert appropriate false claim about Canadian care here.]
Three years ago, long before this blog came into existence, Health Affairs ran an article on Canadians seeking care in the US.
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The authors used some nifty methodology, including surveying numerous US hospitals along the border, as well as institutions generally regarded as "America's Best Hospitals". On the Canadian side, they used the National Population Health Survey (which literally asks, "In the past twelve months did you receive any health care services in the United States?" and "Did you go there primarily to get these services?"), as well as querying insurance companies on the Canadian side about the popularity of policies that cover US institutions.
Before I pull back the curtain to reveal their astounding findings, let's make a couple things clear. Many Canadians travel in the US every year. It is expected that this fact will show up in statistics. Further, I assume there are some very wealthy Canadians who will always say "No thanks" to waiting lists, and hop over to the US. I believe that is a reasonable assumption, and a fact of life that I'm comfortable with.
So what did the authors find?
In terms of hospitals along the border offering advanced treatments or special diagnostic technology (i.e. CT scans and MRIs), about 640 Canadians were seen, along with 270 for procedures like cataract surgery. They compare this to about 375,000 and 44,000 similar procedures in the region of Quebec
alone during the same period. If you divide the total number of Canadians seeking those treatments in the US, divided by the number in Quebec alone that's about 0.09%. Not even a tenth of a percent.
But the most striking stats come from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS). From the article:
Only 90 of 18,000 respondents to the 1996 Canadian NPHS indicated that they had received care in the United States during the previous twelve months, and only twenty had indicated that they had gone to the United States expressly for the purpose of getting that care.
Only 20 of 18,000 sought care in the United States. I can't believe how many people are coming over here! Their system but be truly awful.
But let's give this number some context. We've all heard about seniors getting their prescriptions from Canada. (Hell, even driving to visit my sister at college in rural Kansas, I saw a billboard for "Canada Drug of Topeka!") But how many seniors really do that? Is it exaggerated, like the claims of Canadians coming stateside?
Polling data from 2003 (approximately a year after the Health Affairs article) indicates that 8% answered YES to the following question:
"Have you ever bought prescription drugs from Canada or other countries outside the United States in order to pay a lower price?"
If 8% of the 18,000 Canadians polled in NPHS had expressly sought care in the United States, that would be 1,440. Not 20, as the survey showed.
In other words, we have 72 times the number of Canadians seeking care in the US going to Canada (or at least calling there) to get prescriptions.
Honestly, what's really wrong with this picture?
[Source: Katz, Steven J et al. "Phantoms in the Snow: Canadians' Use Of Health Care Services In The United States." Health Affairs May/June 2002
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