Titled:   As Canada's Slow-Motion Public Health System Falters, Private Medical Care Is Surging

Canada's health system has often been held up as a paragon of success by those interested in instituting a single-payer system south of the border, in the US. It is technically illegal to charge for treatment, resulting in long and incresing waiting lists for basic operations:

The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.

Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years in discomfort before receiving treatment.

But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.

The country's publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.

Dr. Day, for instance, is planning to open more private hospitals, first in Toronto and Ottawa, then in Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Ontario provincial officials are already threatening stiff fines. Dr. Day says he is eager to see them in court.

"We've taken the position that the law is illegal," Dr. Day, 59, says. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

...

The median wait time between a referral by a family doctor and an appointment with a specialist has increased to 8.3 weeks last year from 3.7 weeks in 1993, according to a recent study by The Fraser Institute, a conservative research group. Meanwhile the median wait between appointment with a specialist and treatment has increased to 9.4 weeks from 5.6 weeks over the same period.

Average wait times between referral by a family doctor and treatment range from 5.5 weeks for oncology to 40 weeks for orthopedic surgery, according to the study.

Current waiting times in the UK:

• 8 months for cataract surgery
• 11 months for a hip replacement
• 12 months for a knee replacement
• 5 months to repair a slipped disc
• 5 months for a hernia repair

It's the same story across the Western world:

A recent survey of hospital executives in five countries (Australia, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and the United States) found that none of the U.S. executives thought a 65-year-old man would have to wait six months or more for routine hip-replacement surgery. The numbers for other countries, which have greater government control of healthcare, were significantly higher: 81 percent of hospital executives in Britain, for example, thought the wait would be more than six months.

And this is for non-urgent medical care, for just pain. Look at the current times for Ontario:

Hospital wait times for key services. Average wait time in days.

• MRI scan: 55
• CAT scan: 30
• Cancer surgery: 37
• Angiography: 22
• Angioplasty: 11
• Bypass surgery: 22
• Cataract surgery: 142
• Hip replacement: 162
• Knee replacement: 203

The BBC reports of a UK woman being asked to wait for 18 months for an MRI!

There are some benefits to a centralized, one-payer, socialized medical system, but quick access to needed services is clearly not one of them.