Canadian Healthcare Wait Times: Dat Cash Be Gone 💸
Waiting for health care cost Canadians $5.2 billion last year: study. Fraser Institute just dropped some tea ☕. Turns out, waiting for healthcare in Canada cost us all a collective $5.2 BILLION in lost wages last year. Like, bruh, that's a LOTTA avocado toast we could've had.
TL:DR
Fraser Institute just dropped some tea ☕. Turns out, waiting for healthcare in Canada cost us all a collective $5.2 BILLION in lost wages last year. Like, bruh, that's a LOTTA avocado toast we could've had.
The Deets
Okay, so boom. The Fraser Institute, which is, like, a fiscally conservative think tank (aka they're all about the money 💰), dropped a study. And the study is saying that Canadians are straight-up losing dough because of long healthcare wait times. We're talking almost $5.2 billion, fam!
Apparently, around 1.5 million Canadians were stuck waiting for treatment in 2024. And because of that wait, each person lost an average of $3,364. That's rent money for some people! The study based this on a survey of doctors, who said the median wait time from seeing a specialist to actually getting treatment was 15 weeks in 2024. Fifteen weeks! That's, like, a whole semester.
But get this, the study low-key says this is a conservative estimate. Why? Because it doesn't even count the time you spend waiting to see the specialist in the first place! And it doesn't include all the hours outside the 9-to-5 grind. If you count ALL the hours, the cost could be as high as $15.9 billion. That's, like, Bezos-level money.
And if you're on P.E.I., my condolences. Patients there lost the most money, like $6,592 on average. New Brunswick, Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia follow behind. Basically, no province is safe from these Ls.
The article also mentioned that Canada's wait times are long af compared to other developed countries. So, yeah, that's the tea. Healthcare in Canada might be free at the point of service, but you def paying with your time and money, no cap.
Abbreviations Glossary
| Abbreviation | Full Form |
|---|---|
| Tea | Gossip, important information. |
| Bruh | A casual way to address someone, used for emphasis. |
| Dough | Money. |
| Low-key | Subtly, somewhat. |
| Conservative | Careful, estimated at the lower end. |
| Bezos-level | Referring to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, used to denote extreme wealth. |
| L | Loss |
| Af | As F*ck. |
| No cap | No lie, for real. |