Canadian Doctor Smacks Down Smug GOP Senator About Health Care (VIDEO)

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) had his talking points about the failings of the Canadian health system soundly destroyed by a Canadian doctor.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Senator Bernie Sanders’ subcommittee on primary health and aging called in several experts from other countries who have “successful and popular government-sponsored single-payer systems, provide universal coverage and match or outdo the United States on numerous measures of medical outcomes — for far less money than the U.S. spends.”

“By far the high point of the morning was an exchange between Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Danielle Martin, a physician and health policy professor from Toronto. In the exchange, Martin bats down the myths and misunderstandings about the Canadian system that Burr throws at her.”

The exchange began with Senator Burr asking Dr. Martin about doctors exiting the public system in Canada:

BURR: Why are doctors exiting the public system in Canada?

MARTIN: Thank you for your question, Senator. If I didn’t express myself in a way to make myself understood, I apologize. There are no doctors exiting the public system in Canada, and in fact we see a net influx of physicians from the United States into the Canadian system over the last number of years.

Burr then questioned Martin about Canadian official opting to go to Florida instead of availing themselves of the Canadian system. (As noted by L.A. Times: “The reference to “Premier Williams” is to Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams, whose decision to have a heart valve procedure in Miami, near where he owns a condo, rather than Canada, is widely viewed in Canada as a rich man’s failure to investigate the care available to him closer to home.”)

BURR: What do you say to an elected official who goes to Florida and not the Canadian system to have a heart valve replacement?

MARTIN: It’s actually interesting, because in fact the people who are the pioneers of that particular surgery, which Premier Williams had, and have the best health outcomes in the world for that surgery, are in Toronto, at the Peter Munk Cardiac Center, just down the street from where I work. So what I say is that sometimes people have a perception, and I believe that actually this is fueled in part by media discourse, that going to where you pay more for something, that that necessarily makes it better, but it’s not actually borne out by the evidence on outcomes from that cardiac surgery or any other.

The knockout punch came at the end of the testimony as Burr tried to pin Martin down over Canadian wait times.

BURR: On average, how many Canadian patients on a waiting list die each year? Do you know?

MARTIN: I don’t, sir, but I know that there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don’t have insurance at all.

You can watch Dr. Martin testifying below:

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