The study you reference seems a bit weak. They polled hospitals in Michigan, New York and other border states? The Canadians that I know who have got to the US for care go to places like the Mayo Clinic or Sloan-Kettering.
At any rate, rationing of healthcare is a reality in Canada. A few years back the Supreme Court of Canada stated that the ban on private health insurance violated Canadians' right to security as the waiting times for the public system were so high.
> They polled hospitals in Michigan, New York and other border states? The Canadians that I know who have got to the US for care go to places like the Mayo Clinic or Sloan-Kettering.
They also polled Canadians directly to approach the question from both sides.
> Several sources of evidence from Canada reinforce the notion that Canadians seeking care in the United States were relatively rare during the study period. Only 90 of 18,000 respondents to the 1996 Canadian NPHS indicated that they had received health care in the United States during the previous twelve months, and only twenty indicated that they had gone to the United States expressly for the purpose of getting that care.
"The Canadians that I know who have got to the US for care go to places like the Mayo Clinic or Sloan-Kettering."
So it's that they want to go to the pre-eminent institutions in the world, not "American healthcare (as a whole) is better than Canadian" - -your- inference is weak.
If that is the determining factor, I can guarantee that if those same Canadians had needed a heart transplant in the 80s, they would have flown to Sydney to go to St Vincent's and be operated on by Dr Victor Chang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Chang). I think your causality is broken.
At any rate, rationing of healthcare is a reality in Canada. A few years back the Supreme Court of Canada stated that the ban on private health insurance violated Canadians' right to security as the waiting times for the public system were so high.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaoulli_v._Quebec_(Attorney_Ge...