Health
Canadians face longest waits for health care on record
From the Fraser Institute
By Bacchus Barua and Mackenzie Moir
Just when you thought Canadian health care had hit rock bottom, wait times in 2024 have hit an all-time high.
According to the latest version of our annual report published by the Fraser Institute, the median wait from referral by a family doctor to treatment (averaged across 10 provinces and 12 medical specialties including surgeries) is now 30 weeks—the longest wait in the report’s history and more than three times longer than the 9.3-week median wait in 1993.
Of course, wait times vary by province, and some provinces are worse than others. In New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the median wait is more than one year. And even in Ontario, which reported the shortest wait times in Canada this year, patients faced a 23.6-week wait, the longest in the province’s history.
In fact, compared to last year, wait times grew in every province (except Nova Scotia where patients still faced a median wait just shy of 40 weeks this year).
There’s also considerable variation in wait times depending on the type of care. For example, patients faced the longest waits for orthopedic surgeries (57.5 weeks) and neurosurgery (46.2 weeks) and shorter waits for chemotherapy (4.7 weeks), and radiological cancer treatments (4.5 weeks). In total, the study estimated that Canadian patients were waiting for more than 1.5 million procedures in 2024.
These waits for care are not benign inconveniences. Patients may experience physical pain, psychological distress and worsening physical condition while awaiting care. This year, the 15-week median wait for treatment after seeing a specialist was more than a month and a half longer than what physicians consider a reasonable wait (8.6 weeks). And this doesn’t even include the median 15-week wait to see a specialist in the first place.
Moreover, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a U.S.-based health-care research organization, among nine universal health-care systems worldwide, last year patients in Canada were the second-most likely to report waiting longer than one month for a specialist consultation, and the most likely to report waiting more than two months for surgery. In other words, although long wait times remain a staple of Canadian health care, they are not a necessary trade-off for having universal coverage.
And to be clear, wait times are only one manifestation of the strain on Canada’s health-care system. It’s now also normal to see emergency room closures, health-care worker burnout, and data suggesting millions of Canadians are without access to a regular health-care provider.
What’s the solution to Canada’s crippling health-care wait times?
There are many options for reform. But put simply, if policymakers in Canada want to reduce wait times for patients across the country, they should learn from better-performing universal health-care countries where patients receive more timely care. With wait times this year reaching an all-time high, relief can’t come soon enough.
Health
Lack of adequate health care pushing Canadians toward assisted suicide
From LifeSiteNews
The family of an elderly man is speaking out about the terrible hospital conditions that led their father to request euthanasia before he died of natural causes.
The family of Cleo Gratton, an 84-year-old retired diamond driller who died earlier this month in Chelmsford, Ontario, of natural causes after being approved for assisted suicide, is speaking publicly about their appalling experience in the Canadian healthcare system.
According to the CBC, the elderly man “told his family he would rather die than go back to Health Sciences North in Sudbury,” and that a recent stay there found Gratton, who was suffering from heart disease and kidney failure, spending one night in the emergency room and then being transferred to a bed sitting in the hallway on the seventh floor.
“There were no lights, all the bulbs in that hallway had been completely removed,” his daughter, Lynn, told the CBC. “The only light we had was almost like a desk lamp that had been bolted to the wall. Patients are passing by, nurses are going by, no privacy, no compassion, no dignity.” The visit took place in mid-October, after which Gratton decided to apply for “medical aid in dying,” or assisted suicide.
Lynn said that nurses had to use headlamps to inspect her father’s feet, and that the experience was “just one thing after another and it really opened our eyes to what’s going on in our hospitals. My dad said, ‘Push, push, push for change. Make people aware of what’s gong on. Open the discussion, bring it to your MP, your MPP, keep going straight up.”
His family is now honoring his wishes to speak out about his experience. The doctors and nurses, Lynn emphasized, were “amazing,” but she noted that they seem overworked. “Why are they still taking in patients if we have an overcrowding issue and they have no place to put these people?” she said.
Cleo Gratton, who died of natural causes surrounded by his family before he could go through with assisted suicide, is just the most recent of many examples of Canadians opting for assisted suicide because they could not access the care that they actually desired.
In Quebec last year, Norman Meunier, a quadriplegic man, developed bedsores after four days left on an ER stretcher without a good mattress. That experience combined with lack of available homecare pushed him to request, and receive, assisted suicide.
An unnamed woman in her 80s, referred to in a MAID report as “Mrs. B,” received MAID earlier this year after requesting but being denied palliative or hospice care. Instead, with her spouse burning out as the result of her care, a rushed MAID assessment was completed, and she died by lethal injection.
In 2022, 44-year-old Winnipeg woman Sathya Dhara Khovac died by euthanasia after failing to receive the homecare resources she had desperately sought. In her posthumous obituary, she said she could have had more time if she’d had more help.
In 2019, 41-year-old Sean Tagert was euthanized after spending years attempting to find and fund the homecare and resources he needed to stay in the community where his son lived. He did not want to die but felt that he had no other choice.
And, among other stories, at least four Canadian veterans were offered assisted suicide in lieu of the unavailable mental health supports they were requesting.
Stories of Canadians seeking palliative care, mental health resources, homecare, and other medical support finding that the only option available to them is assisted suicide have become routine over the past several years. Euthanasia has become a pressure valve for an overworked and under-funded healthcare system serving an aging population increasingly need of complex care — and if assisted suicide for mental illness is legalize, things will get much, much worse.
Dr John Campbell
Cures for Cancer? A new study shows incredible results from cheap generic drug Fenbendazole
From Dr. John Campbell
You won’t hear much about Fenbendazole from the regular pipeline of medical information. There could be many reasons for that. For one, it’s primarily known for it’s use in veterinary medicine. Somehow during COVID the medical information pipeline convinced millions that if a drug is used on horses or other animals it couldn’t work for humans. Not sure how they got away with that one considering the use of animal trials for much of modern medical history.
Another possible reason, one that makes at least as much sense, is that there’s no business case for Fenbendazole. It’s been around for decades and its patent expired in the early 1990’s. That means it’s considered a generic drug that a pharmaceutical company from India could (and does) produce in mass quantities for very little profit (compared to non-generics).
So Fenbendazole is an inexpensive, widely accessible antiparasitic drug used in veterinary medicine. During the COVID pandemic a number of doctors, desperate for a suitable treatment, tried it with reportedly great levels of success. Over some time they discovered it might be useful elsewhere. Some doctors are using Fenbendazole to help treat late stage cancer. Often this is prescribed when the regular treatments clearly aren’t working and cancer is approaching or has already been declared stage 4.
What they’ve found at least in some cases is astounding results. This has resulted in a new study which medical researcher Dr. John Campbell shares in this video.
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