Quote from GSCO:
I think the original discussion was about health insurance in which case some of the US insurance plans would not cover that anyways.
Besides, I think you answered your own rebuttal. Many Canadians do go to the US to have things like angioplasty, rather than have their life hanging like a ticking time bomb. If something isn't covered by the Gov't, much like in the US, we can just pay to get it done...........
Canadians who have to travel to the U.S. to have medical procedures done in a semblance of a timely fashion are in a sense double paying for already covered procedures. The very high tax rates Canadians pay are supposed to cover the same procedures they have to come to the U.S. and pay additionally for.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/TPHealth18.html
The 11th annual survey of Canadian health care waiting lists conducted by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute found that the median waiting time for non-emergency surgery and treatments in Canada increased from 13.1 weeks (3 months) in 1999 to 16.2 weeks (3.7 months) in 2000-01.1
The estimated number of Canadians waiting for medical care also rose from 840,358 in 1999 to 878,008 in 2000-01, or over 2.85% of the total Canadian population of 30.8 million. To put these figures into perspective, if the U.S. had the same health system as Canada almost7.9 million Americans would be waiting for treatment.2
Of the 10 Canadian provinces, Saskatchewan had the longest median waiting time at 28.9 weeks, (6.7 months) and Ontario the shortest at 13.9 weeks (3.2 months).
Among the twelve medical specialties surveyed, the longest waiting times were for ophthalmology (cataract removal, cornea transplant, treatment of glaucoma, etc.) at 27.9 weeks (6.4 months), and orthopedic surgery at 26.4 weeks (6 months). However, in some provinces typical waiting times for some procedures can be more than a year. For example, the median wait for neurosurgery in Manitoba is 66 weeks (15.2 months), while the wait for orthopedic surgery is 67.4 weeks (15.6 months) in Saskatchewan and 70.8 weeks (16.4 months) in New Brunswick.
Nationwide, the shortest waits in Canada were for cancer chemotherapy at 5.0 weeks and radiation therapy at 8.9 weeks (2 months). However, patients needing chemotherapy can expect to wait 10 weeks (2.3 months) in Saskatchewan and 12.6 weeks (2.9 months) in Newfoundland.
Given these waiting times, it is not surprising that Canadian physicians reported in the survey that 1.7% of all their patients instead obtained medical care in another country - presumably most in the U.S. In fact, 5.6% of all Canadians needing radiation therapy for cancer obtained treatment outside of Canada.