The rest of us would have had to wait

Some might call it luck. I'd call it privilege.

It was pure luck that former prime minister Jean Chrétien was part of a Monday golf foursome that included Montreal cardiologist Dr. Guy Pelletier. Chrétien, 73, told Pelletier about chest pain he had been experiencing. Pelletier advised him to see a doctor, since the pain could be related to his heart.

[...]

But the next day, with his chest pain worsening, he listened to his daughter, France Desmarais, who urged him to get treatment immediately. He cancelled a trip and went to the Montreal Heart Institute. There, emergency quadruple-bypass heart surgery was carried out successfully. His prognosis, his doctors say, is excellent.

No hospital waits for him. He shows up in the morning and has a quadruple bypass before the day is out. Somehow I don't think that is the standard of health care service the rest of us can expect. We would have had to wait.

Waiting for cancer treatment

These conclusions don't seem all that surprising:

Does Canada's publicly funded, single payer health care system deliver better health outcomes and distribute health resources more equitably than the multi-payer heavily private U.S. system?

[...]

We find a somewhat higher incidence of chronic health conditions in the U.S. than in Canada but somewhat greater U.S. access to treatment for these conditions. Moreover, a significantly higher percentage of U.S. women and men are screened for major forms of cancer. Although health status, measured in various ways is similar in both countries, mortality/incidence ratios for various cancers tend to be higher in Canada. The need to ration resources in Canada, where care is delivered "free", ultimately leads to long waits. . . We also find that Canada has no more abolished the tendency for health status to improve with income than have other countries. Indeed, the health-income gradient is slightly steeper in Canada than it is in the U.S.

While this study is not necessarily an argument to adopt "US-style" health care – it does cost a lot more – the results skewer more of the myths about Canada's health care system.

h/t: Marginal Revolution