alt Hacker NewsWhen I went to Canada, I talked to someone who said the Canadian government will subsidize trips to the US for certain treatments because it's not available at all in Canada or has insane waiting times. It's one data point, I know, but generally I think it's true that quality and availability of care in the US is much better.
I’m a Canadian and I’ve worked in health care.
This is only done for very specialized treatments where the province (they run the health care delivery) doesn’t have the treatment and/or the American resource is closer than a Canadian treatment location.
For example Nova Scotia will send some complex paediatric cases to Boston. They could send them to Toronto, but Boston is closer. Same with Manitoba but they use Minneapolis.
Canada is only 40m people and almost half that is in one province. The smaller provinces simply don’t have the population to justify having every possibly medical bell and whistle.
Point is when province sends Canadians for US treatment is isn’t actually about better quality as not all provinces have the same in house capacity and often the next largest city with such capacity is an American city.