In an effort to stop misinformation about single payer health care [View all]

[Saviolo]

I can guarantee you're going to see a lot of misrepresentations in the media in coming days, weeks, and months about how bad single-payer health care is, and it's probably going to focus heavily on how "bad" the Canadian system is.

**** PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A RIGHT WING TALKING POINT ****

Do not believe it. Is the Canadian system perfect? No, absolutely not. Is it good? Yes, it is good.

Please see the below for a debunking of some of the most common myths:

http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-03-2012/myths-canada-health-care.html

For example:

Myth #2: Doctors in Canada are flocking to the United States to practice.

Every time I talk about health care policy with physicians, one inevitably tells me of the doctor he or she knows who ran away from Canada to practice in the United States. Evidently, there’s a general perception that practicing medicine in the United States is much more satisfying than in Canada.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information has been tracking doctors’ destinations since 1992. Since then, 60 percent to 70 percent of the physicians who emigrate have headed south of the border. In the mid-1990s, the number of Canadian doctors leaving for the United States spiked at about 400 to 500 a year. But in recent years this number has declined, with only 169 physicians leaving for the States in 2003, 138 in 2004 and 122 both in 2005 and 2006. These numbers represent less than 0.5 percent of all doctors working in Canada.

So when emigration “spiked,” 400 to 500 doctors were leaving Canada for the United States. There are more than 800,000 physicians in the United States right now, so I’m skeptical that every doctor knows one of those émigrés.
In 2004, net emigration became net immigration. Let me say that again. More doctors were moving into Canada than were moving out.