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It generally opposes public policy solutions based on government spending, taxes, deficits, and regulation. Some of the public policy stands taken by the Institute include: greater free trade throughout the world, privatization of various government services, the freedom to own and acquire firearms without controls, marijuana legalization, competition in primary schooling, and greater private sector involvement in the delivery of healthcare insurance and services.
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--------------- WAITING YOUR TURN 17th EDITION Hospital Waiting Lists In Canada (2007)
Ontario represents 36% (12 million) of Canada's total population (33 million), so looking at Ontario's health care performance is representative of 1 out of every 3 Canadians.
According to the above Fraser Institute document, the first segment of waiting: between referral by general practitioner and visit to a specialist for consultation in Ontario in 2007 was 7.6 weeks across an average of 12 medical specialties. The second segment of waiting: between the specialist?s decision that treatment is required and treatment in Ontario was 7.3 weeks. Therefore in Ontario, the average time between referral to a specialist and eventual treatment was
14.9 weeks.Note that there is high variablity based on speciality. As one would hope, the total wait time for ELECTIVE cardiac surgery (Canadian average) was 8.4 weeks, for radiation oncology was 5.7 weeks, medical oncology 4.2 weeks. The longest wait times was for othopedic surgery (38 weeks) and neurosurgery (27 weeks).
My indirect personal experience with orthopedic surgery is that the people that eventually undergo elective orthopedic surgery aren't bothered by the wait time, and indeed they need coaxing and convincing to begin the process to see a specialist in the first place. Note that accident cases where a hip is broken almost always requires surgery with a few days of the accident, so don't get any ideas that those patients are waiting 38 weeks for their treatment. The same is true of emergent cardiac care.
I don't know why neurosurgery has 27 weeks, except that again it's probably not a life-threatening situation, and perhaps if it's a brain cancer then maybe brain cancers are slow growing. You might also need lots of pre-surgical planning and tests for brain surgery.
The report details that the time between seeing a specialist and being treated in Ontario in 2007 was 16.9 weeks for orthopaedic surgery, 2.8 weeks for elective cardiovascular surgery, and 7.7 weeks for ophthalmology procedures. The wait to see an orthopaedic specialist was
12.0 weeks and the wait to receive hip or knee surgery was 20.0 weeks. The median waiting times for angiography / angioplasty was 3 weeks, and for elective cardiac bypass surgery was 2.5 weeks.The report says this about wait times in other countries:
------------------------ Moreover, academic studies of waiting time have found that Canadians wait longer than Americans, Germans, and Swedes (sometimes) for cardiac care, although not as long as New Zealanders or the British.
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But no details about how much longer (days? weeks?). Further into the report, some details about the above statement indicate that it was based on data from the early 1990's. There seems to be absolutely no recent US data in that report to make a US - Canada comparison.
The tone of the report is definately slanted towards portraying the data in a negative light, even though in many cases the wait times have been reduced from recent years. The report relies heavily on making conclusions on aggregate Canadian data, where some provinces (with relatively low population) tend to skew the wait-time results upward.
So, can anyone identify US wait-time studies?