A Vancouver hospital with staff shortages cancelled more than 100 heart surgeries in the first six months of last year, according to a new report. Patients queued up — again — to wait for care.
Such stories abound in Canada and the United Kingdom, where the government operates and pays for health care.
But long waits aren’t a bug of single-payer healthcare systems; they’re a feature. So argues Michael Baker, Director of Health Care Policy at the American Action Forum in its new series Reality Check-Up: The Truth About Single-Payer Systems.
Check out the post Baker published yesterday: “Single-Payer Health Care Wait Times: A Feature, Not a Bug.” His argument that wait times stem from a fundamental problem of supply and demand is spot-on.
Single-payer systems have their budget capped by government. Since demand for care typically exceeds available resources, governments must ration procedures and appointments. Hence the lengthy delays between referral and treatment. When hospitals can only fund a set number of appointments and surgeries, patients who need care beyond that limit must wait weeks or months.
As Baker points out:
In 2024, Canadian patients experienced a median wait time of 30 weeks between referral to their first treatment – up from 27.2 weeks in 2023. In rural areas, delays in care were lengthier, with waitlists for patients in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island ranging from 69.4 weeks to 77.4 weeks.
These delays aren’t an accident. They’re the inevitable consequence when government manages health care from the top down. The story is the same in Great Britain. Here’s Baker again:
As of March 2024, the NHS’ wait list stood at approximately 7.4 million patients, consisting of around 6.3 million unique patients waiting for treatment. Of these more than 7 million patients, 3 million have been waiting beyond the 4.5-month standard, while more than 200,000 have been waiting for more than a year.
Some Americans want the United States to make the switch to single-payer. As Baker explains, they’d better prepare to wait.
