CALGARY, CANADA— The U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health should take note of Canada’s experience, where a government run, single-payer health care system burdens citizens with lengthy wait times for surgery and other treatments, says a leading Canadian health economist.

“Americans who seek to use Canada as a model for reforming their health care system need to be aware that a single-payer health care system like Canada’s results in unacceptably long waits for medical procedures,” said Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute director of health system performance studies and co-author of the 18th annual edition of Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada.

“In spite of large increases in health spending, wait times in Canada are 86 percent longer now than they were in 1993 and are having a considerable impact on the well being of Canadians.”

The Fraser Institute, an independent research organization, conducts an annual survey on surgical wait times in Canada. In 2008, it found the median wait time for Canadians seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment stood at 17.3 weeks.

With the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health holding hearings into health care reform this week, many politicians and commentators have suggested the U.S. should emulate Canada and implement some form of universal, government run health insurance system. But the Fraser Institute’s peer-reviewed research highlights many of the flaws inherent in the Canadian system.

“Having access to a waiting list is not the same as having access to care,” Esmail said.

The Fraser Institute has measured hospital wait times in Canada since the early 1990s. Its annual report measures median waiting times to document the extent to which waiting lists for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures are used to control health care expenditures. The report measures the wait times between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist, the time between seeing the specialist and receiving treatment, the total wait time, and the wait times for MRI, CT, and ultrasound scans.

Among specialties, the longest waits between a GP referral and treatment were found for orthopedic surgery (36.7 weeks), plastic surgery (35.5 weeks), and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).  The shortest waits were found for medical oncology (4.6 weeks), radiation oncology (5.8 weeks), and elective cardiovascular surgery (7.3 weeks).

“I can’t imagine Americans embracing a system where waiting more than 36 weeks for knee surgery is considered routine,” Esmail said.