Pipe down

Health Business Blog readers know I'm amused when right-wing critics of the US health care system start pointing out problems in other countries to argue against reform in the US. There's a classic example from right-wing blowhard Sally Pipes in last weekend's Examiner. The headline: Obama-Daschle “reform” will cripple American health care tells you pretty clearly where she's coming from.Here's a little taste:

Government reimbursement rates already discourage doctors from accepting patients with government coverage. As the government program slowly becomes the only game in town, what then of physicians?  Will they simply accept their fate?  We can look to our north for a possible answer.Canadians have "enjoyed" universal health coverage since the 1970s. They also enjoy the rationing of care. Both drugs and physicians are in short supply...Because there aren't enough doctors, Canadians must wait in line. Wait times for referrals from primary care physicians to specialists in Canada exceed 18 weeks -- twice what doctors consider clinically acceptable.

The unwritten assertion is that we don't have wait times in the US. But if Pipes believes that she must be pretty healthy. She may also not read very much. Here are a couple of examples:

  • In Boston, the waiting time to see a dermatologist for a "changing mole" --perhaps the closest thing in dermatology to an emergency-- is 10.5 weeks. It takes 3.5 months to arrange a routine visit to a dermatologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
  • At Children's Hospital in Boston it takes 6 months to get an assessment for a child whose speech is delayed. I recently learned that there is a 10 month wait at Children's to have a child assessed for cognitive development issues that affect performance at school. I guess parents just need to tell the teacher, wait till next year!

Don't scare us with waiting list horrors, Sally. We already spend 2x what any other country spends and "enjoy" waiting times and limited access to care for the uninsured. Canada does not have a great system but at least there's universal access and there's no such thing as medical bankruptcy.

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Cavalcade of Risk is up at American Consumer News

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Grand Rounds is up at In Sickness and In Health