PAPER: Canadians visit U.S. to get care; Many go to Michigan hospitals... Hospitals in border citie

This has been known for some time; Canadians who live near American cities can get obtain treatment in an American hospital. It saves the Canadians from duplicating facilities which are available nearby across the border. The American hospitals are compensated by the Provincial Ministry of Health and cost the recipient nothing. Both benefit. This has been distorted by wingnuts as a failure of the single-payer system.





PAPER: Canadians visit U.S. to get care; Many go to Michigan hospitals...

Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.




Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.

The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.


http://freep.com/article/20090820/BUSINESS06/908200420/1319/

services are provided HERE because they aren't available there, or aren't available in a timely manner.

how fluid the Michigan / Canadian border is. I know because I grew up there and, while growing up, we really didn't think of each other as "Canadians" or "Americans". It appears to me that the Canadians of made a totally pragmatic (and NAFTA-ish) decision to not spend 10s of millions of dollars to build facilities and infrastructures that are a mere hop, skip, and jump away.

... who COMMUTED to jobs in the Detroit area in the 60s and 70s was huge ... with many going the other way as well. Indeed, some/many American citizens would choose to live in/around Windsor and work in the Detroit area. We thought almost nothing of it and frequently crossed the border to have dinner, go see a play at the Shakespeare festival or spend a weekend in Tee-Oh and enjoy the Yonge Street scene.

for it's oil needs?

Sid

for use by the citizens of another country.

Sid

""It saves the Canadians from duplicating facilities which are available nearby across the border. ""

In other words the services are not wastefully duplicated in Canada. If Canadians were not to come across the border for these services then there would have to be more Canadian facilities.

I suspect that the Canadian government has negotiated very good terms for its citizens to use US facilities, something the US government will not do for its citizens.

care of their own.

Like the universal health care system in Canada, some things are just plain common sense. Canada's climate is not great, and most people congregate somewhere around the border. There's lots of intermarriage, trade is basically "I'll get my gas on this side, my china-manufactured bed sheets on that side, and groceries, depending on the dollar." Works both ways. Please don't judge an entire health care system based on the few hot spots where people come and go between the US and Canada as though you were taking a long walk in one direction or another.

It's called "efficiency", you maximize the utilization of the resources available to you.

but in some Canadian border citites, it makes more sense to get them at the closest facility, rather than the closest Canadian facility.

From Windsor, Detroit is much more convenient than getting the same specialized treatment at the nearest Canadian major medical research facilities in London (~1½ hours away), Hamilton (2½ hours) or Toronto (3½ hours).

Sid

NOBODY from Toronto & vicinity would EVER considering going all the way across the country to detroit...!!!

where they both have top-notch medical facilities. Probably better than what is found in Buffalo (or Detroit for that matter).

Sid

Edit: and Toronto to Detroit is about 4 hours. Hardlly "across the country".

A typically MSM paper.

... with the Detroit News taking the (allegedly) more conservative posture. It's often hard to tell the difference beyond the superficial.

(But I'm not telling you so much as just putting it out here.)
:hi:

I say Lucky Canadians, who have a country that actually cares about it's citizens.

if we had a national health service the hospitals in detroit would not have the room for canadians.......

pretty dam sick..the Canadian government "pays" it`s citizens to go to the usa...while our government allows over 50 million to fend for themselves

This was in the late 80's and the Canadian government worked out a deal with the hospital (one of many) to do their excess open heart patients. These patients paid nothing, they liked their health care and everyone I asked said they would never trade it for what we had/have.

that Canada still pays for it.

Sid

Only people in Detroit with health care are people on free Canadian health care or free American government health care.

In upstate New York, I guess Canada had facilities that were closer than Syracuse. I am not sure how that worked out on my uncle's insurance.

"The fraud problem was particularly acute in cities close to the US, where 37 million people have no health insurance. According to Ontario doctors who work in these cities, many former residents who moved to the US kept a mailing address in Canada in order to obtain a health card. Some Americans who own cottages in Ontario form another group of abusers: because they have an Ontario address, they can obtain a health card. Other cases involve out-of-country visitors borrowing valid OHIP cards from friends and family members for medical treatment in Canadian emergency wards."

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/eppp-archive/100/201/300/cdn_medical_association/cmaj/vol-154/1412.htm

"It's not an epidemic in any one person's practice," said Keith MacLeod, an obstetrician in Windsor, Ontario, across from Detroit, "but I would estimate that from 12 to 20 of my patients at any one time are ineligible Americans. And I'm just one of 520 doctors in Windsor, 23,000 in Ontario."

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/20/world/americans-filching-free-health-care-in-canada.html?pagewanted=all