Canadians find affordable health care in US

Toronto Sun:

A soaring loonie isn't just good news for cross-border shoppers looking for a good deal on running shoes and plasma televisions.

Suddenly private health care in the U.S. is 30% more affordable.

American clinics have always been an option for patients in this province who want speedier access to health care than our one-tier public system can offer. What's more, this province has a doctor shortage. The U.S. does not.

Joanne Thompson knows all too well the heartache that happens when a loved one needs care in this province -- and can't get it.

Thompson, city editor at the Sault Ste. Marie Star, needed to find an MRI in May for her sister, Jennifer Abbott. A partial paraplegic, Abbott was fearful of the enclosed type of MRI machine, but the wait for a test on an open MRI in the border city was three to five months -- far too long for the neurological condition she suffers from.

So Thompson checked the ads and found a clinic across the border in Michigan that offered same day service for an open MRI -- two hours away.

"Her condition was such that we were too worried to wait any longer," Thompson said in a telephone interview.

"We were able to get an appointment the next day. To me that was unbelievable," she said. And she didn't mind paying a few hundred bucks out of pocket.

"When you can get an MRI within a day, it's worth a few bucks," she said.

Of course, Canadians have shopped for health care in the U.S. for decades. What's new is now it's 30% cheaper.

...

This province just doesn't have the medical staff or the resources to provide the same level of care as the U.S.

Essex County, where Schumacher practises, with a population of 400,000, until recently had only two CT scanners and one MRI machine. They just got a second MRI. Across the border in Port Huron, Mich., population 12,000, they had four MRI machines 10 years ago, Schumacher says.

...

The OMA estimates this province is short more than 2,000 physicians -- all just numbers and statistics for politicians, perhaps. But for Joanne Thompson and her sister, these figures add up to one thing: Prolonged suffering. And the cure? A passport -- and shopping trip.

Rudy Giuliani's joke about where would Canadians go to get health care if Democrat policies were adopted keeps ringing true. The liberals in the media keep looking for excuses, but the facts keep slipping out. Socialized medicine is a failure. If it were so wonderful who would so many Cubans risk their lives to leave it?

The UK also has significant dissatisfaction with its National Health Service.