Quebec is, in fact, the “worst case scenario” as far as I can discern in Canada. This is like taking one state in the US that has particularly large student to teacher ratios and claiming it is typical of the US. That’s not a fair comparison. I looked at averages across the country; that’s is a much fairer comparison!

I do like that you point out that there are problems with healthcare in Canada, but the articles you cite are newspaper articles and certainly aren’t authoritative. One is a poll of people who are unsatisfied with their healthcare (i.e., lack faith in it). Great. What percentage of Americans are dissatisfied with their healthcare? 78% by this poll:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcare031020_poll.html

Nifty. Americans are just about as dissatisfied as are the Quebecois (not all Canadians), but that says nothing about actual wait times, which was the point of my original post. What I did in my original post was look at the peer-reviewed literature to compare wait times across the two countries. And what I found was that for emergency care they are about the same, on average. I never claimed that was true of all hospitals, only that they are about the same on average.

If you have issues with the original post, try reading the articles I cited and the reports I cited. Then take issue with those. There was nothing in my post that was just me opining about what was going on. I was trying to provide accurate information for a student.

My hospital does quite well, but is hardly a “best case scenario”. There are hospitals in heavily competitive markets that achieve and advertise <5 minute door to doctor averages- by having a physician doing triage at the door prior to registration. These numbers can be manipulated to any end imaginable. The question remains- does any of it change outcomes? Or is it just another example of how superficial "appearance" equals fact in our society.

The "worst case scenario" in Quebec is by no means an isolated scenario. Please read the article. The following link is for an article "80% of western Quebec residents lack faith in ERs".

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/02/19/gatineau-hospitals.html

This may seem unbelievable to some that have been fed the "Canadian health care system is superior to all" dogma, but there are some major flaws in all health systems. Canadians do get more universal preventive/ primary care access. But comparing critical care, emergent care, sub-specialty, surgical care does give the US some distinct advantages.

The original article cited its own flaw "Comparing the numbers for the US to the numbers for Canada aren’t really accurate. The data in the US is for all emergency room visitors (both acute and not acute) while the data for Canada is primarily for the most acute." Then goes on to make hypothetical "I'm guessing" and "probably" statements to illustrate what point exactly?

Also, the author engages in exactly what you inaccurately critiqued my response for "comparing “best case scenario” (your hospital) with “worst case scenario” (the one in the link you sent) isn’t a fair comparison". My response describes the state of ER's in the Quebec region- with astoundingly poor wait times. The original quoted article claims "overall visit time in the emergency department in at least one region in Canada is about half of that in the US". Obviously they are not referring to Quebec.

The comparison of health systems is interesting and multifaceted, but is full of misleading numbers, examples and opinions. Honest discussion and exploration of the subject can hopefully educate us all.

The following link describes huge wait times at some ERs in Canada- some so bad primary care physicians refuse to send emergent patients to the ER because they know the waits would harm their patients.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/21/ot-er-waits-080521.html?ref=rss