Wait Times in Health Care

From time to time, I blog about politics. A while back, I noted why I thought Obama's health care plan appealed to me.

One of the comments of that post (in particular) and a problem with "socialized medicine" in general is long wait times for elective procedures. Then I came across this article entitled the myth of waiting lines. It's a short article, and the gist of it is this. Yes, Americans don't wait for elective surgery. Rather, they are priced out. Key statistics:

- 38% of Britons and 27% of Canadians reported waiting four months or more for elective surgery.
But:
- 24% of Americans reported that they did not get medical care because of cost.
- 26% said they didn't fill a prescription because of cost.
- 22% said they didn't get a test or treatment because of cost.

While, only 6% of Canadians and Britons didn't get care because of cost.

Here's the money graf:

"The question, in other words, is not whether you ration care, but how you ration it. It also casts our smug attitude towards care access in a new light. If someone can't afford care, we record their waiting time as zero. You don't wait for what you can't have. But a more accurate accounting would record that wait as infinite, or it would record when the patient eventually ends up in the emergency room because the original ailment went untreated."

Go read the whole thing.

ETA From the longer LA Times article:

"Moreover, surveys conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have found that most countries don't have waiting lines or the uninsured. Not Germany or France or Japan or Sweden, all of which have more of a mix of public and private options."

Obama's proposal is a mix of private and public options.