For some, Canada Care means dying in wait room

I can see Canada from my back yard. Any day now, I expect to see tired Canadians hauling themselves up on my sea wall and asking for water. This is no time to be Canadian.

It was bad enough when American teams, relying on Swedish, Finnish, Czech and Slovakian players, as well as Americans, overtook, and then surpassed, Canada's NHL teams. With our newfound pride, we started snapping back at Canada's largest group, self-righteous liberals dripping with disdain for American individualism.

Now, we're landing still another blow on our Canadian neighbors, who, in this neighborhood, can be found to the south and east as well as the north.

We are pointing with scorn at the Canadian health care system, Canada Care, citing it as an example of the horrors that would follow socialization of American health care. But we are reyling on evidence produced by Canadian physicians organized as the Wait Time Alliance.

Two of its findings: The wait time for emergency treatment averages seven hours. The median wait for life-threatening cancer treatment is seven weeks, which means that half of the patients wait even longer.

The Wait Time Alliance, formed by Canadian doctors in response to government pledges to reduce wait times, has produced a report called "Unfinished Business." It notes that psychiatric patients wait, on average, almost six weeeks for treatment.

It takes, on average, 18 weeks for a patient to see a speicalist recommended by a family doctor. In some specialties, doctors are refusing to accept referred patients.

The report says that only glacial progress has been made since the government pledged to reduce wait times.

“Although there are signs of improvement, the lack of uniform and timely information on wait times is just one symptom of the ‘unfinished business’ relating to wait times in Canada,” the WTA reported.