CANADIANS HEAD TO THE UNITED STATES FOR URGENT CARE

The lie by US media con-men (Rush, Beck, FOX not news): Canada's government-run health care is so bad that needy patients need to pay for care in the United States.

The liars: The advocacy group Patients United Now is running a television ad featuring Ontario resident Shona Holmes, who claims, "I survived a brain tumor, but if I had relied on my government health care, I'd be dead." She says she traveled to the United States for lifesaving treatment.

In June, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said, "For cardiac bypass surgery, patients in Ontario are told they may have to wait six months for a surgery that Americans can often get right away."

The debunking: Holmes did indeed pay $100,000 for care she received from Minnesota's famed Mayo Clinic, considered one of the best medical centers in the world.

But Holmes' treatment was not a lifesaving anti-cancer measure. The Mayo Clinic's own Web site explains that she had a cyst -- not a brain tumor -- which was not necessarily life-threatening. (It also explains that Mayo is a nonprofit cooperative and strongly supports health-care reform.)

In general, Canadians are not flocking south for health care, and for good reason. According to a report from the Fraser Institute, a prominent Canadian think tank, both the Canadian and U.S. governments spend about 7 percent of their GDPs on health-care costs. (The United States, including private expenditure, spends about 16 percent of GDP on health care.) But all Canadians are covered for all medical care, plus some prescription drug costs. In the United States, 47 million are uninsured, and hundreds of thousands declare bankruptcy every year due to medical bills.

There are wait times in Canada, but nobody waits for emergency surgery; McConnell's claim about bypass patients is untrue. In 2007, a non-emergency patient in Ontario waited about 61 days for elective bypass surgery, according to Canada's health service. Such collected data is not made public in the United States.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_about_global_healthcare?page=0,1