Waiting...and waiting for health care in Canada

Barack Obama and the Democrats are putting the final touches on their government health care plan. As I've noted quite a few times here, the plan is to rush through their socialized medicine scheme before Americans learn about stories such as this one from Canada.com:

Only slight improvement has been made on cutting wait times in five priority health-care areas, according to an annual report, and governments are failing to apply targets to a broader range of specialties.

The 2009 report card released Thursday by the Wait Time Alliance, says there remains "much unfinished business," in improving the amount of time between when a patient is referred by a family doctor to when treatment is provided by a specialist. The WTA is made up of 13 medical associations including the Canadian Medical Association.

The report also notes that patients are still having a hard time accessing information about wait times.

"Governments have much more work to do if they are going to provide a complete, accurate and real picture of how long patients can expect to wait for care," WTA co-chair Dr. Lorne Bellan said.

The article goes on to explain that Canadian cancer patients have to wait seven weeks for radiation treatment, the accepted benchmark is four weeks.

Battling cancer quickly is crucial in defeating the disease. Speed is equally important when being treated in emergency rooms, but Canadians face an average nine hours to be treated and seen, and have to wait an average of 24 hours to be admitted into a hospital.

Canada has government-run health care.

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