Since 2018, Over 75,000 Canadians Died Waiting For Health Care

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

If you think Canada has such a great nationalized health care system, you need to reconsider.

Death by Delay

SecondStreet reports 15,474 Canadians Died Waiting for Health Care in 2023-24

Today, SecondStreet.org released government data showing an additional 15,474 patients in Canada died in 2023-24 before receiving various surgeries or diagnostic scans. However, that number is incomplete, as several governments provide either partial data, or simply do not track the problem.

SecondStreet.org collected the data by filing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests across Canada. When the data collected is extrapolated across jurisdictions which did not provide data, the number actually nearly doubles, to around 28,077. These figures cover everything from cancer treatment and heart operations to cataract surgery and MRI scans.

“Canadians pay really high taxes and yet our health care system is failing when compared to better-performing universal systems in Europe,” said Harrison Fleming, Legislative and Policy Director at SecondStreet.org. “Thousands of Canadians across the country find themselves on waitlists — in some cases for several years -— with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated, or even diagnosed.”

Key Findings

• At least 15,474 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgeries or diagnostic scans. This figure does not include Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador and most of Manitoba. Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries – not diagnostic scans.

• If one extrapolates the data provided across provinces and health regions that did not provide data, an estimated 28,077 patients died last year on health care waiting lists.

• While some response data is vague, SecondStreet.org observed cases where patients died after waiting anywhere from less than a week for treatment to more than 14 years.

• New data from Ontario Health suggests 378 patients died while waiting for cardiac surgery or a cardiac procedure.

• Since April 2018, SecondStreet.org has identified a staggering 74,677 cases where Canadians died while waiting for care.

Another 15,000-Plus Euthanized

The National Review comments on Canada’s Socialized Health-Care Culture of Death

What a debacle. More than 15,000 people died in Canada in one year because they couldn’t access care in the country’s collapsing socialized health-care system.

But it gets worse. About the same number of people were euthanized in Canada in 2023. Some asked to be lethally jabbed because they couldn’t access health care in a timely fashion.

Free Stuff is Grand

Here are some comments to the National Review Article

• Adjusting proportionally for population, that would be 239,104 deaths in the United States and would make “Unavailability of health care” the third leading cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer but ahead of such massive killers as accidents, COVID, and diabetes.

• If the US adopted Canada’s approach to health care, where would Canadians go for their time-critical and technically advanced medical care? Living in the Great Satan’s shadow has its benefits!

I arrived at a similar 234,488 waiting deaths in the US if the results were similar.

Free stuff is grand, if you don’t die waiting for it.