Canadian Health Care Has Failed

The advocates of government health care point to Cuba and Canada as models of "single payer" type health care.  Everyone knows that the Cuban health care system is busted, so single payer advocates tout the Canadian system.  The Canadian health care system may be adept at facilitating the "suicide" of the elderly and disabled, but it is a fraud on the public as far as restoring health goes.  Why Canada's wealthy come to the United States for their health care, a major factor in Michigan:

https://www.newsmax.com/sallypipes/canada-chemotherapy-neurological/2025/07/02/id/1217345/

Let the Message Be Clear: Canadian Healthcare Failed
By Sally PipesWednesday, 04 July 2025

Meet Mary, a 60-year-old woman from British Columbia.

She needed a colonoscopy to confirm her cancer diagnosis.

Mary spent four months on a waiting list.

Then her bowel ruptured, and she suffered life-threatening sepsis.

Due to the delay in treating her cancer, she had to get chemotherapy, which came with serious neurological side effects.

That's the opening anecdote in "My Fight for Canadian Healthcare: A Thirty-Year Battle to Put Patients First," a new book by Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the private Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dr. Day has spent his career fighting to deliver better care to Canadians. He has decades' worth of firsthand knowledge of how Canada's single-payer healthcare system has devastated his countrymen.

Americans can expect a similar disastrous fate if we follow Canada's lead and adopt Medicare for All, as most Democrats would have us do.

Canada once possessed a state-of-the-art healthcare system.

But today, Canadians wait a median of 30 weeks for care from a specialist following referral by a general practitioner. People regularly die before reaching the operating table.

Some even receive pressure from medical professionals to end their lives through "medical assistance in dying."

Dr. Day rightly blames this decline on the socialization of Canadian healthcare.

When he began practicing orthopedic surgery in 1973, Canada had no waiting lists for surgery and no nurse shortages. Up to 30% of his patients didn't have health insurance.

They received care anyway — at no charge.

But in the 1980s, Canada fell behind peer countries in technology and building upgrades. Doctors left Canada for nations with more up-to-date facilities.

Instead of working to upgrade its health system, the Canadian government doubled down on the dysfunction.

The Canada Health Act of 1984 codified a "global budget" model in which providers receive block grants to spend on patients.

If the money runs out, individuals stay on waiting lists.

Rather than fixing its doctor shortage, the government simply decided in 1991 that an "oversupply" of doctors was artificially creating a "supply-induced demand" for care.

Thus, future policy dictated there must be fewer doctors.

Medical schools slashed admissions by 11% to 30%.

Immigrant doctors no longer received licenses. Nursing schools shut down.

Disaster followed. Canada has 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people.

That ranks 36th among 38 OECD countries.

Even the doctors Canada does have can't practice to their full capacity.

To save money, surgeons must limit the time they spend in the operating room.

Between 1981 and 1995, surgeons at UBC Hospital in Vancouver saw their surgical hours cut from as much as 22 hours per week to roughly five, according to Day.

Hospitals in the 1990s received orders to slash spending on new technologies. According to a 2024 study published by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Canada ranks 27th of 31 developed countries in MRI machines per capita and 28th of 31 in CT scanners per capita.

Patients who want a private hospital room have to pay a daily fee out of pocket. Otherwise, they'll find themselves cohabiting with three or more other patients — often of the opposite sex.

One test of a medical system is how well it wards off preventable deaths.

Public hospitals in Canada have a preventable death rate of one per 100 admissions.

By contrast, Dr. Day's privately owned and operated Cambie Surgery Centre has had zero preventable deaths in more than 26 years of treating over 80,000 cases.

Recognizing the failures of their own healthcare system, many Canadian politicians and celebrities seek private care in the United States.

That list of individuals includes former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and former Liberal Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach, both passionate supporters of single-payer.

But traveling abroad for care isn't available to most taxpayers.

The average family of four spent nearly $18,000 in taxes last year just to cover the cost of their state-sponsored health coverage.

It's shocking to recall Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's recent claim that, in Canada, "health care is a right." When people are struggling to access routine surgical procedures, they're hardly enjoying a "right" to care.

Canada's single-payer woes haven't stopped progressives from pushing similar policies here. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., this year reintroduced his trademark "Medicare for All" legislation, which would bring Canadian-style health care to the United States.

And Democrats recently brought forward a bill that would create a "Part E" for Medicare to serve as a new public option.

Americans would do well to be leery of such proposals. Canadian-style health care doesn't work. Just ask the Canadians.

Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "The World's Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy — and How to Keep It" (Encounter 2025). Follow her on X @sallypipes. Read Sally Pipes' Reports — More Here.