The town of Norwood, Ontario, has only one family doctor available to serve the entire community. To ration the patient list, the town clerk holds a lottery once a month, drawing a few names out of a box that contains all of the people hoping to get on the doctor's patient list. She calls the lucky winners, but everyone else must continue to wait.
Altogether now: clutch pearls!
Mr. Stossel has proven that there is one Canadian town with a shortage of doctors. That's all.
How are we doing in the US? I've had trouble finding exact numbers, but rural Kansas has a severe doctor shortage: "state health officials say about 90 Kansas counties do not have enough physicians," as does rural Minnesota, Nevada, Massachusetts, rural Wisconsin (there's a two-year wait for child psychiatric services), rural Mississippi, 152 counties in Texas have no obstetrician, and 21 Texas counties have no doctor of any type. I think you get the idea.
Let's look at some overall numbers--
Number of Americans that don't have health care. 47.5 million
Number of Canadians that don't have health care: 0
U.S doctors per 1000 people: 2.56
Canadian doctors per 1000 people: 2.14
US nurses per 1000 people: 9.37
Canadian nurses per 1000 people: 9.95
Found here.
A comprehensive study of the difference between Canadian and US health care finds:
These results are incompatible with the hypothesis that American patients receive consistently better care than Canadians. Americans are not, therefore, getting value for money; the 89% higher per-capita expenditures on health care in the United States does not buy superior outcomes for the sick.
Canadian health care has many well-publicized limitations. Nevertheless, it produces health benefits similar, or perhaps superior, to those of the US health system, but at a much lower cost.
John Stossel should be ashamed of himself for such a deceptive report. What's the matter with the truth?
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