Canadians contrast their health care to U.S.’s

TORONTO | For a Canadian facing emergency surgery in the United States, a ride on a privately chartered Lear jet back to Canada is a whole lot cheaper than having the operation in a U.S. hospital.

Canada’s universal health care system will pay for urgent medical care outside the country, but at Canadian rates of about $360 a day for a hospital stay.

That compares with daily rates of up to $5,000 to $6,000 a day in Florida, where tens of thousands of well-to-do Canadian retirees spend each winter.

Before stepping across the border, “the first thing a Canadian thinks about is supplemental health insurance,” said Michael MacKenzie, a spokesman for the Canadian Snowbird Association, which represents about 80,000 migratory citizens from the land of ice and snow.

No wonder President Obama’s plan to expand American health coverage to the uninsured has become such a hot topic north of the border.

If Mr. Obama succeeds, the U.S. could draw even more Canadian doctors and nurses to the U.S., exacerbating a shortage of medical professionals, said Dr. Brian Day, a Canadian health care critic and former head of the Canadian Medical Association.

If Mr. Obama fails, perhaps Canada could open its system to “medical tourism” from the U.S., Dr. Day said.

About 500,000 Americans annually travel to other counties such as India, Thailand and the Philippines for high-quality but much cheaper medical care, he said. Few of them go to Canada, where the notion of funding public hospitals with money from U.S. patients has been politically unacceptable.

The Canadian system insures everyone, and all Canadians have access to basic and critical health care without ever seeing a doctor or hospital bill.

Nevertheless, the demands on the system have led to waiting lists for treatments such as MRI scans, cataract and artery bypass surgeries and hip replacements.

That’s one reason why 70 percent of Canadians have some form of supplemental health insurance, whether or not they plan to visit the United States.

The Canadian system needs fixing, said Dr. Robert Ouellet, president of the Canadian Medical Association.

“We have improved waiting times from years to months in most areas, but people still wait too long even in emergency rooms,” he said.

Dr. Ouellet suggests that the U.S. look elsewhere for models of universal health care.

Both the U.S. and Canadian governments, he said, would do well to examine systems such as one in the Netherlands, which provides universal and broader-based health care through a small number of regulated, private health insurers and government funding at a slightly lower cost than in Canada.

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