One million on the waiting list for treatment in Canadian single payer rationed healthcare scheme

Forbes:

Canada's single-payer healthcare system forced over 1 million patients to wait for necessary medical treatments last year. That's an all-time record.

Those long wait times were more than just a nuisance; they cost patients $1.9 billion in lost wages, according to a new report by the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think-tank.

Lengthy treatment delays are the norm in Canada and other single-payer nations, which ration care to keep costs down. Yet more and more Democratic leaders are pushing for a single-payer system -- and more and more voters are clamoring for one.

Indeed, three in four Americans now support a national health plan -- and a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that health care is the most important issue for voters in the coming election.

The leading proponent of transitioning the United States to a single-payer system is Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont's firebrand independent. If Sanders and his allies succeed, Americans will face the same delays and low-quality care as their neighbors to the north.

By his own admission, Sen. Sanders' "Medicare for All" bill is modeled on Canada's healthcare system. On a fact-finding trip to Canada last fall, Sanders praised the country for "guaranteeing health care to all people," noting that "there is so much to be learned" from the Canadian system.

The only thing Canadian patients are "guaranteed" is a spot on a waitlist. As the Fraser report notes, in 2017, more than 173,000 patients waited for an ophthalmology procedure. Another 91,000 lined up for some form of general surgery, while more than 40,000 waited for a urology procedure.

All told, nearly 3 percent of Canada's population was waiting for some kind of medical care at the end of last year.
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Some of the problems with single payer systems should be obvious.  With no competition, there is no incentive to give treatment on a timely basis.  There is also little incentive for innovation in giving care and producing new pharmaceuticals.  The Canadians and other single-payer systems have been free riding on drugs for treatment while US patients and insurance companies pay most of the cost of developing these new drugs.  If the US went to single-payer, the incentive to develop new medications would also shrink.