Health Reform Hub Issues

Issues :: International

Brain cancer treatment: A life extended, savings depleted
Charlie Fidelman

The Gazette, 05/25/11

Alice Thepen was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer that surgery could not fix. Her doctors gave Thepen six weeks to live – but there was one hope, a new cancer medication approved by Health Canada in 2005. Unfortunately for Thepen, 53, of Montreal, bevacizumab – better known by its brand name Avastin – is not covered in Quebec. Oncologists say they are reluctant to tell their patients about new treatment options – when a medication is not publicly funded and the patient has no recourse to private insurance – for fear of creating panic.  Read more...

NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors
James Ball and Denis Campbell

The Guardian, 05/19/11

Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends. New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.  Read more...

New Efficiencies in Health Care? Not Likely
Theodore Dalrymple

The Wall Street Journal, 4/16/11


All attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it, and the same goes for cost. Such, at any rate, has been my experience of the British health care system—its famed, or infamous, National Health Service. Thus, I could not but smile a little wanly when President Barack Obama said this week that he hoped an increase in the use of generic drugs, together with an expert commission to examine the cost-effectiveness of medical treatments, would make a significant impact on the vast budget deficit of the United States. We in Britain have been there and we have done that, and our health-care costs doubled, perhaps not as a result, but certainly at the same time. The best that might be said for these measures is that the increase in health-care costs was lower than it might otherwise have been. That is certainly not enough to save a country from a financial apocalypse, or even enough to be a major contribution to its salvation. Read more...

Canadians Buy U.S. Health Care as Weak Economy Pushes Down Prices
Lisa Priest

The Globe and Mail, 3/4/11


A flailing U.S. economy has helped push down prices for medical procedures, allowing middle class Canadians who previously couldn’t afford it to head south for heart operations, hip replacements and other procedures. Open-heart surgery once cost upwards of $100,000 in the United States, but a triple bypass can now be had for as little as $16,000 U.S. And there are bargains on hip and knee replacements too: the going rate of $53,000 can be negotiated to less than $19,000. Read more...

Medical Treatment, Out of Reach
Andrew Pollack

The New York Times, 2/9/11


Late last year, Biosensors International, a medical device company, shut down its operation in Southern California, which had once housed 90 people, including the company’s top executives and researchers. The reason, executives say, was that it would take too long to get its new cardiac stent approved by the Food and Drug Administration. “It’s available all over the world, including Mexico and Canada, but not in the United States,” said the chief executive, Jeffrey B. Jump, an American who runs the company from Switzerland. “We decided, let’s spend our money in China, Brazil, India, Europe.” Read more...

The Myth of Free Health Care
Wall Street Journal, 1/21/11


Of all the myths about the National Health Service, none is more pervasive or persistent than the notion that under the single-payer system, health care is provided solely on the basis of medical need rather than cost. Not so. Health may be a thing beyond price, but not health care. This week, David Cameron's government unveiled its bill to reform the NHS. The plans would abolish the current structure of the Service in England and replace it with local consortiums of doctors that would buy health-care services for their patients from other branches of the Service, or from competing private... Read more...

WikiLeaks Cables: Michael Moore Film Sicko Was 'Not Banned' in Cuba
David Batty

The Guardian, 12/18/10

American diplomats made up a story that Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, in an attempt to discredit the film which painted an unflattering picture of the US healthcare system, the film-maker said today. A confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks claimed that Castro's government banned the Oscar-nominated film because it painted such a "mythically" favourable picture of Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a "popular backlash". Read more...

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada 2010 Report
Bacchus Barua, Mark Rovere, and Brett J. Skinner

Fraser Institute, 12/10

The Fraser Institute’s twentieth annual waiting list survey finds that province-wide wait times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments have increased in 2010. The total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and delivery of elective treatment by a specialist, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, has risen from 16.1 weeks in 2009 to 18.2 weeks in 2010. Compared to 1993, the total waiting time in 2010 is 96 percent longer. Read more...

Ontario Told to Pay for U.S. Surgery
Tom Blackwell

National Post, 12/15/10

Suffering headaches, vomiting and imbalance, Suresh Kapur was diagnosed with bleeding on the brain when he showed up at a Toronto-area hospital, then given an “urgent” follow-up appointment with a neurosurgeon — three days later. The retired professional engineer decided to seek out a second opinion in Buffalo, N.Y., that same day, only to have doctors there rush him into the OR, believing “there were absolutely no grounds” for waiting longer. Now the patient has won a year-long battle to get Ontario’s medicare system to cover his U.S. costs, reviving questions about Canada’s stretched brain surgery resources and reliance on the United States to fill the gaps. Read more...

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada 2010 Report
Bacchus Barua, Mark Rovere, and Brett J. Skinner

Fraser Institute, 12/06/10

The Fraser Institute’s twentieth annual waiting list survey finds that province-wide wait times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments have increased in 2010. The total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and delivery of elective treatment by a specialist, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, has risen from 16.1 weeks in 2009 to 18.2 weeks in 2010. Compared to 1993, the total waiting time in 2010 is 96 percent longer. Patients in Ontario experience the shortest wait (14.0 weeks) followed by Manitoba (17.5 weeks), and British Columbia and Quebec (18.8 weeks). Canadians wait nearly 3 weeks longer than what physicians believe is “reasonable” for elective treatment after an appointment with a specialist. Throughout the provinces, in 2010 people are waiting for an estimated 825,827 procedures. Assuming that each person waits for only one procedure, 2.45 percent of Canadians are waiting for treatment. Read more...