There is no free lunch at the cutting edge of technological health care and slogans about social justice won’t produce MRI machines to feed demand in the absence of profitability.

Great quote for an open market system period.

What IS undoubtedly true is that you don’t get off paying taxes for public health care just because you don’t use it. Inevitably the rich subsidize services they do not use. The same could be said in both countries for education; the wealthy help pay for schools their children will never visit (along with the childless).

That happens here now – read – uninsured are covered by those who are insured.

My observations about rationing of health care in Canada were admittedly anecdotal, but I think they have an unusual degree of credibility since I have family members in northern Minnesota who have personally met Canadians coming across the border to seek care not available to them in Canada.

Yes the Canadian system is so great – they are offering private insurance for those who are frustrated with the basic level of care.

Access to the Rochester Clinic in urban Minnesota versus care in say rural Wisconsin or the UP of Michigan.

While Rochester has a population of about 180,000, it cannot seriously be called "urban", as it is 100 miles away from the true city of Minneapolis-Saint Paul.  And the proper name of the major hospital there is the Mayo Clinic, not the Rochester Clinic. Also, the medical care in Rochester is an exception in any country and not useful as a basis for comparison.

My observations about rationing of health care in Canada were admittedly anecdotal, but I think they have an unusual degree of credibility since I have family members in northern Minnesota who have personally met Canadians coming across the border to seek care not available to them in Canada.

However, my state did recently start up a program for low income adults.  That’s the one where you have to wait six months, which brings up the question:
If you’re already low income and have to wait six months (for non- exceptional cases), that seems like an unnecessary barrier to getting it, since people might need healthcare now, not just six months from now.

For example, I’m about to start a job on Monday that doesn’t provide healthcare for six months.  I want to use this new plan in the meanwhile, since I can’t afford going on my own right now.  I have two chronic conditions that need regular testing and medication that costs over $200 a month.  Does making $26,000 a year mean I have to wait six months to use it?  Hopefully I’ll find out soon when they tell me if I’m eligible or not.

That’s my problem with some of these programs.  The amount of red tape can be staggering.

There is a good reason that the wealthiest people from Canada and the U.K. wind up seeking care in the United States as their only option for avoiding stringent rationing and even outright unavailability of some high-tech tests and treatments in their own country.

My link to healthaffairs.org disputes this assertion with a study of Canadians in the Michigan and New York areas. From the study/report:

 U.S. ambulatory facilities survey. Almost 40 percent of the facilities we surveyed
reported treating no Canadians, while an additional 40 percent had seen
fewer than ten patients (Exhibit 1). Fifteen percent of respondent sites reported
treating 10–25 Canadian patients, and only about 5 percent reported seeing more
than 25 during the previous year (generally 25–75 patients; none reported more than
100). These findings were fairly consistent across the service categories. The overall
response rate was 67 percent, and it varied across type of clinical facility from 56
percent for ambulatory surgery centers to 80 percent for cancer centers.
Ifwe extrapolate these findings (assuming that nonrespondents show a pattern
similar to that of respondents), these facilities in the three large metropolitan ar-

May/ J u n e 2 0 0 2 2 3
U s e O f S e r v i c e s

eas combined saw approximately 640 Canadian patients for diagnostic radiology
services such as computed tomography (CT) scans or MRI and 270 patients for
eye procedures such as cataract surgery over a one-year period. By comparison, the
annual volume for CT scans and cataract extractions averaged about 80,000 and
25,000 procedures, respectively, in British Columbia alone during the mid- 1990s.9
In Quebec the annual volume during the same period for CT scans and MRI averaged
375,000 procedures and 44,000 procedures, respectively.

The availability of these advanced tests is more a function of rural versus urban. Access to the Rochester Clinic in urban Minnesota versus care in say rural Wisconsin or the UP of Michigan.

Please accept my apology, I wish your family well during this crisis.

Vice: Price…
I would only rephrase that as "cost".  Every system has to deal with that and how it will be paid.