Fox News doctor Marc Siegel, a member of the network's so-called Medical A-Team, lashed out at health care legislation proposed by Sen. Bernie Sander (I-VT) by stretching the truth about Canada's single-payer health care system.
On Sunday's edition of Fox & Friends, Siegel argued that a single-payer health care legislation would destroy the current capitalism-based system "that works." Siegel carefully ignores that it doesn't work for the estimated 11.3 percent of Americans who are still not insured. Nor did he address how our capitalism-based system costs exponentially more per capita with worst health outcomes.
"I'm really worried about that," the doctor opined. "You go up to the north, to Canada, Fraser Institute said last year -- just up to last year alone -- the average waiting time between the time you see a primary care doctor, like me and the time you get treated by your specialist for surgery, effectively whatever it is, whatever treatment it is, it's 20 weeks waiting time! Twenty weeks on average."
But the doctor's recollection of the Canadian statistics was faulty at best.
While it's true that the Fraser Institute <ahref="http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-care-wait-times-hit-20-weeks-in-2016-report-1.3171718">did find that some treatments could take up to 20 weeks in worst case scenarios, many provinces had wait times that are half that.
But when it came to priority surgeries, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported in 2016 that priority surgeries were performed within 48 hours, an improvement over 2012 statistics.
