The Trump Drug Plan: Buy Canadian

[crazy canuck]

I suspect a big part is that there is simply no limit to what people are willing to spend to stave off illness and death; so marginal increases in efficacy are rewarded disproportionately.   

There is no limit to what people are willing to spend on anything, if some entity without a human face on it is footing the bill.

And yet our system is less expensive

[viper37]

I suspect a big part is that there is simply no limit to what people are willing to spend to stave off illness and death; so marginal increases in efficacy are rewarded disproportionately.   

There is no limit to what people are willing to spend on anything, if some entity without a human face on it is footing the bill.

And yet our system is less expensive

we die on a waiting list instead of dying for lack of funds to pay for the surgery

[Malthus]

we die on a waiting list instead of dying for lack of funds to pay for the surgery

Wait times certainly exist and they are generally longer in Canada - but both nations have wait times:

Wait times
One complaint about both the U.S. and Canadian systems is waiting times, whether for a specialist, major elective surgery, such as hip replacement, or specialized treatments, such as radiation for breast cancer; wait times in each country are affected by various factors. In the United States, access is primarily determined by whether a person has access to funding to pay for treatment and by the availability of services in the area and by the willingness of the provider to deliver service at the price set by the insurer. In Canada, the wait time is set according to the availability of services in the area and by the relative need of the person needing treatment.[citation needed]

As reported by the Health Council of Canada, a 2010 Commonwealth survey found that 39% of Canadians waited 2 hours or more in the emergency room, versus 31% in the U.S.; 43% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, versus 10% in the U.S. The same survey states that 37% of Canadians say it is difficult to access care after hours (evenings, weekends or holidays) without going to the emergency department over 34% of Americans. Furthermore, 47% of Canadians and 50% of Americans who visited emergency departments over the past two years feel that they could have been treated at their normal place of care if they were able to get an appointment.[51]

A report published by Health Canada in 2008 included statistics on self-reported wait times for diagnostic services.[52] The median wait time for diagnostic services such as MRI and CAT scans is two weeks with 89.5% waiting less than 3 months.[52][53] The median wait time to see a special physician is a little over four weeks with 86.4% waiting less than 3 months.[52][54] The median wait time for surgery is a little over four weeks with 82.2% waiting less than 3 months.[52][55] In the U.S., patients on Medicaid, the low-income government programs, can wait three months or more to see specialists. Because Medicaid payments are low, some have claimed that some doctors do not want to see Medicaid patients. For example, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, specialists agreed to spend one afternoon every week or two at a Medicaid clinic, which meant that Medicaid patients had to make appointments not at the doctor's office, but at the clinic, where appointments had to be booked months in advance.[56] A 2009 study found that on average the wait in the United States to see a medical specialist is 20.5 days.[57]

In a 2009 survey of physician appointment wait times in the United States, the average wait time for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in the country as a whole was 17 days. In Dallas, Texas the wait was 45 days (the longest wait being 365 days). Nationwide across the U.S. the average wait time to see a family doctor was 20 days. The average wait time to see a family practitioner in Los Angeles, California was 59 days and in Boston, Massachusetts it was 63 days.[58]

Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 42% of Canadians waited 2 hours or more in the emergency room, vs. 29% in the U.S.; 57% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, vs. 23% in the U.S., but Canadians had more chances of getting medical attention at nights, or on weekends and holidays than their American neighbors without the need to visit an ER (54% compared to 61%).[59] Statistics from the Canadian free market think tank Fraser Institute in 2008 indicate that the average wait time between the time when a general practitioner refers a patient for care and the receipt of treatment was almost four and a half months in 2008, roughly double what it had been 15 years before.[60]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States#Wait_times