The US health care wait times myth
theincidentaleconomist.com
The US health care wait times myth
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Re: The US health care wait times myth
#2What I find interesting about the "We beat Canada" idea is how few Canadians move to the USA in search of better health care. Rich Canadians take advantage of the porous border by travelling to the US and paying for certain procedures, but generally when someone permanently moves from Canada to the US, it's always in search of economic improvement.
I would like to see statistics showing that Canadians would happily take a job with the same or worse pay just to get access to US health care. If the US system was superior in ways that mattered to people, we should be able to measure this effect by looking at immigration.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#3What I find interesting about the "We beat Canada" idea is how few Canadians move to the USA in search of better health care. Rich Canadians take advantage of the porous border by travelling to the US and paying for certain procedures, but generally when someone permanently moves from Canada to the US, it's always in search of economic improvement. I would like to see statistics showing that Canadians would happily t…
I agree, it would be nice to see some data on that.
A few days ago we had a discussion here on HN about the viability of Montreal as a startup hub, and when I raised the question of what Canadian cities in general could do to counter the higher pay and better climate down south, I somehow completely forgot (as did any responders) about the potential advantage of our kinder (if at times sluggish) healthcare system, especially in light of medical tourism options.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#4What I find interesting about the "We beat Canada" idea is how few Canadians move to the USA in search of better health care. Rich Canadians take advantage of the porous border by travelling to the US and paying for certain procedures, but generally when someone permanently moves from Canada to the US, it's always in search of economic improvement. I would like to see statistics showing that Canadians would happily t…
Immigration requires a whole lot of push. Given how many Canadians already live within easy driving distance of the US border, even gigantic differences in efficiency and quality wouldn't drive much actual transnational immigration.
You move across a border for a better job, not to potentially shave 45 minutes off your wait time after a putative future cycling accident.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#5What I find interesting about the "We beat Canada" idea is how few Canadians move to the USA in search of better health care. Rich Canadians take advantage of the porous border by travelling to the US and paying for certain procedures, but generally when someone permanently moves from Canada to the US, it's always in search of economic improvement. I would like to see statistics showing that Canadians would happily t…
Immigration requires a whole lot of push. Given how many Canadians already live within easy driving distance of the US border, even gigantic differences in efficiency and quality wouldn't drive much actual transnational immigration. You move across a border for a better job, not to potentially shave 45 minutes off your wait time after a putative future cycling accident.
If we were confident that the friction of immigration exceeds the allure of better wait times, then we can say with some confidence that better wait times simply aren't that important to people. Or at least, not as important as making more money, or retiring to a warm place, or hanging out where the action is.
If it doesn't rank next to those other reasons for immigration that all exceed the friction, I would suggest that people stop defending the US system by saying it's better than Canada's system. It isn't better enough. If you like it, fine. If you don't like it, fix what you don't like. But arguments that it's better than Canada should be accompanied by evidence that it exceeds what is actually an incredibly small amount of friction.
I mean, come on, it's not like you have to learn a new language or give up your love of Hockey to move from Canada to the US. If you have a university degree the whole thing is fairly painless.
p.s. On second reading, I see you talking about driving across the border for "Medical Tourism." To my understanding, this is inconvenient for seeing a GP or a specialist, and while some people consider it worthwhile for an MRI, it is not possible to buy into US medical insurance that would cover anything really expensive.
So effectively, medical tourism is equivalent to being completely uninsured in the USA. I don't think anyone argues with a straight face that being uninsured in the US is superior to being subject to the horrors of Canadian medical care. My understanding is that people argue that being insured in the US is more convenient than being a Canadian. If I thought that being insured in the US was superior to Canadian health care, I wouldn't reason that driving across the border for an MRI somehow gives me the best of both worlds, I'd want US insurance so that I could drive across the border for a heart transplant.
And for that, I'd have to move to the US and suffer the same slings and arrows of outrageous deniability fortune suffered by Ms Drabinsky when she tried to insure her family.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#6Interesting article, but can I nominate that last line chart for a worst-graph-colors-of-the-year award? Even after finding out that they are, in fact, different colors it's hard to find any country in it, much less with confidence.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#7The author stumbled over one of the most important pieces of data - GP's per 100,000 people. The author notes we have the lowest doctor:population ratio, adding:
"And that’s after spending way, way, way more money than anyone else"
So we artificially restrict the supply of doctors, which inflates (and I would argue is intended to inflate) the salaries of all doctors, while also shifting the market equilibrium to a lower quantity of medical services provided [1].
[1] here's a graphical example for people new to economics: http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/courses/econ2020/section6/...
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#8Data point: I live in the USA, and I've got Crohn's disease. I take medicine for the chronic condition, which keeps it in remission 99%+ of the time. But when it flares up, I need to see a doctor pretty quick -- not just because it hurts, but also because the pain is an indication of bad things happening to my intestines.
The thing is, I can't get an appointment to my GI doctor right now, or even tomorrow. So I can't get a prescription for the heavy duty drugs necessary to bring it under control, not without a significant wait while I'm in pain and my ileum is turning into scar tissue.
My solution is that when I vacation in Mexico, I buy and bring back a personal supply of prednisone. The downside of this is that prednisone is nasty stuff that I don't want to take, it's not as effective as the real treatments, and it's got much worse side effects. But I don't have a way to get the real stuff.
So I'm pointing the finger, at least in part, at the regulations here in the USA. By artificially controlling the number of doctors, and/or constraining our access to pharmaceuticals, we're creating the situation where I am unable to get the treatment I need. This has nothing to do with economics or even insurance company policies, really. It's all to do with nanny-state government.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigration requires a whole lot of push. Given how many Canadians already live within easy driving distance of the US border, even gigantic differences in efficiency and quality wouldn't drive much actual transnational immigration. You move across a border for a better job, not to potentially shave 45 minutes off your wait time after a putative future cycling accident.
If we were confident that the friction of immigration exceeds the allure of better wait times, then we can say with some confidence that better wait times simply aren't that important to people. Or at least, not as important as making more money, or retiring to a warm place, or hanging out where the action is. If it doesn't rank next to those other reasons for immigration that all exceed the friction, I would suggest…
But arguments that it's better than Canada should be accompanied by evidence that it exceeds what is actually an incredibly small amount of friction.
Very true. Since very few people move from one industrialized nation to another for the health care, we should conclude that they all provide very similar services.
Re: The US health care wait times myth
#10My siblings and I take a pill 3x day for life for a genetic condition. The pill(colchicine) cost pennies in its generic form. It isn't a pill that was made in a lab after millions in research. So there were plenty of generic brands available and it'd cost us 5 bucks/mo from Walmart.
That was that.
Last year a company came in and got an exclusive on it on the premise that they spent millions in testing the pill for quality etc. Armed with the exclusive, they killed all generic brands and are selling the same pill for $5/pill.
What cost me $5/mo previously now costs $450/mo.
There is something seriously flawed about some things in our healthcare system.