Mark Steyn on US vs Quebec healthcare

Mark Steyn has been making the following claim on several conservative talk shows (Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, etc.). I really want to find out the full story on this. I'm not sure he's giving us the complete picture.

(this is from http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/talkradio/transcripts/Transcript.aspx?ContentGuid=83cdf976-c0a5-4157-949d-e4963728ab29 )

MS: "There’s a story in Le Journal de Montreal yesterday that said incontinent Quebecers, with serious incontinence problems, that’s people who have to get up to go to the bathroom 12 times per night, have to wait three years for treatment. That’s 12 times a night, 365 times a year, for three years for a routine half-hour procedure for which in the entire province of Quebec, only two urologists will perform it, can perform it. Now under the present system, those incontinent Quebecers can drive a couple of hours south and go to Fletcher Allen hospital in Vermont, or Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire, and write a check. The minute that America has the wait lists and the wait times, and the restricted access to health care, which is all Obama means when he talks about controlling costs. Why is it that socialized systems control costs? Because they restrict access. And it’s easy to do that. If you’re only servicing a certain number of patients, half the number of patients you would be in a free market, obviously you can control costs. This is really, I think, a bridge that if America crosses it, it will be very hard ever to get back."

NOTE: On the Laura Ingraham show, he claimed the machine to perform this procedure is at EVERY hospital in the US. There's no available transcript, but that is what he said.

NOTE: Found the original le Journal de Montreal article here:

http://www.canoe.com/infos/quebeccanada/archives/2009/06/20090610-092400.html

BTW: Turns out 'le Journal de Montreal' is not exactly a medical journal - it is a sensationalist tabloid along the lines of the National Enquirer.

Found some info from Mayo Clinic, here:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/urinary-incontinence/DS00404/DSECTION=treatments-and-drugs

According to the Mayo Clinic page, there are 19 different methods for treating incontinence. The JdM article - to the best of my ability to ascertain - ONLY discusses the availability of ONE of those procedures (sacral nerve stimulation)

Also, this surgical site has some info:

http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/Pa-St/Sacral-Nerve-Stimulation.html

includes the statements:

"This treatment has been used with over 1500 patients"

"It was approved in Europe in 1994" (doesn't say when the FDA approved it)

According to the US Census bureau (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/004491.html) there are over 7,500 hospitals in the US alone. Being generous, let's say there have be twice as many SNS procedures over the years than what SurgeryEncyclopedia reports. That means in the last 15 years, 7,500 hospitals have performed 3,000 SNS procedures.

Mathematically, there are many ways this can happen - none of them are pretty. For example, 3,000 of those hospitals could have invested in the equipment and each one of those hospitals use the equipment exactly once in 15 years, while another 3,500 hospitals invested in the equipment and still have never performed a single SNS procdedure in 15 years. Yikes! Not very efficient use of healthcare dollars! Not to mention the fact that every person who receives an SNS procedure would, in this scenario, be the one and only SNS patient the surgeon ever sees. Personally, I prefer a surgeon who is more familiar with the procedure.