[TheMercenary]

An interesting opinion piece in the local paper.

Sawyer: Canadians visit Maine for care
W. Tom Sawyer Jr. | Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 12:30 am
Contextual linking provided by Topix As a former Maine state senator, former mayor of Bangor, a small business owner who provided health insurance for our employees and their families, a past board member of Maine Blue Cross & Blue Shield, and a current corporator for Eastern Maine Medical Center, I've spent a lot of time discussing health care and government's role in its delivery.

As Congress debates implementing a "public option," I can't help but wonder where Americans will go.

In Maine, our health care facilities are frequented by many Canadians who cross the border to access our responsive and more advanced health care delivery system.

Consider a few statistics:

-- The breast cancer mortality rate in Canada is 9 percent higher than in America.

-- The prostate cancer mortality rate is 184 percent higher.

-- The colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher.

Despite promises, the truth is that preventative medicine suffers under socialized medicine. For example, nine in 10 middle-aged American women like my wife, two adult daughters and my mother have all had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-quarters of Canadians.

Nearly all American women have had a pap smear compared to only one in six Canadians. Nearly one-third of all Americans have had colonoscopies compared to fewer than one in 20 in Canada.

While the prep drink the night before is awful, my three procedures since turning 50 have helped keep me well and alive. Thanks to annual testing, early detection and timely treatment, my 88-year-old father, two uncles and best friend all remain prostate cancer survivors.

Waiting time also increases under socialized medicine due to Rationing. Currently, 827,000 people are waiting for some kind of medical procedure in Canada. It would appear Canadians enjoy greater "access" than Americans - "access to a waiting list" that can take months of utter terror awaiting the actual medical procedure.

I was able to detect, biopsy and have surgically removed a cancerous facial melanoma in only four months seeing physicians in Maine and Georgia last winter.

Americans also have better access to new technologies than patients in Canada. An overwhelming majority of American physicians identified CT scans and MRI's as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade. The U.S. has 34 CT scanners per every million Americans compared to only 12 scanners in Canada and 27 MRI machines per million compared to six machines across the border.

I understand Bangor has more MRI machines than the entire province of New Brunswick, our Canadian neighbor.

If Canadians are forced across the border to seek the quality care they need to treat often preventable diseases, where would Americans go if we are stuck with socialized medicine? Mexico? I don't think so.

Most of my Maine neighbors oppose a Canadian-style, nationalized health care system. Once all Americans have a better opportunity to fairly compare the pros and cons, I expect we'll all want to avoid painfully long waits for medical procedures, lack of access to tests and equipment, and having some bureaucrat "solve" our medical needs.

Our current system is expensive and demands strategic changes to high drug costs for instance, but it's the best system in the world.

I urge Congress to take a long, hard, look at Canadian and European health care systems before making any substantial changes to our existing world class system. The law of untended consequences, based on my own experience with public policy, is too great a threat.


W. Tom Sawyer Jr. lives in Richmond Hill during the winter and in Maine during the summer.

http://savannahnow.com/node/754347