Canadian Patients Wait More than Four Months to See Specialists
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Want a single-payer health care system like Canada? Not so fast, says Kenneth Artz, writing for the Heartland Institute. A new report from the Fraser Institute in Canada documents wait times for Canadian patients, and the results are troubling. On average, Artz reports that Canadians wait 18.2 weeks for treatment after being referred to specialists from their general practitioners.
Wait times have risen dramatically over the last two decades. In 1993, patients waited 9.3 weeks for comparable appointments.
Artz notes that the numbers are medians, so half of Canadians wait longer, while half face shorter wait times: patients in Ontario wait 14.1 weeks for specialist care, while in New Brunswick, patients wait 37.3 weeks to see a specialist.
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