What reality? That Canada is claiming they can match the US? Seems to me the Premier feels otherwise...
Can't deny that statistic. Canada is high in overweight/obesity, but not as high as the USA. However there are plenty of Americans that would rather come here.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=0441d488-bfc7-4171-a8bd-fae425c22052ID theft scams target Canada’s health-care system
Criminals are exploiting lax security in government databases to assume false identities and take advantage of Canada’s health-care system, warns a leading expert in identity fraud.
By The Ottawa CitizenNovember 3, 2008
OTTAWA - Criminals are exploiting lax security in government databases to assume false identities and take advantage of Canada’s health-care system, warns a leading expert in identity fraud.
But such scams go largely unprosecuted because there is no concerted effort by government agencies to go after bogus health-care claimants, says former Edmonton police detective Joe Pendleton.
Mr. Pendleton, who helped uncover one of the country’s most notorious identity-theft schemes, told an Ottawa conference of privacy experts Monday that existing federal and provincial privacy laws hamper criminal investigations by keeping even the most basic patient health records out of the reach of police.
The situation is made worse by a lack of cooperation from health officials, who don’t appear to take the problem seriously, said Mr. Pendleton, who now works as a security consultant.
“I don’t see any resolve within the existing medical paradigm to ferret out and address identity fraud,” he said. “I don’t see any real urge on the part of the community to work with traditional law enforcement to solve the problem. And I think that, in fact, health information privacy legislation actually works against the police and works against the mitigation of these particular crimes.”
Mr. Pendleton recounted the case of William Skupowsky, a U.S. citizen who was arrested in Calgary in 2001 for using a Canadian passport that he had obtained by assuming the identity of a dead nine-year-old boy from British Columbia.
Police later determined that Mr. Skupowsky, a San Francisco resident who went by the name of Randy Klassen, had used his alias to get elective surgery at a Calgary hospital. He also confessed to belonging to a ring of bogus health-care claimants from that city.
“He said, ‘You people have free health care in Canada. That’s pretty well known … I’m part of an underground railway of people coming up from San Francisco to have their medical problems taken care of in Canada,’ “ said Mr. Pendleton.
But when Mr. Pendleton tried to investigate Mr. Skupowsky’s activities, he found himself stymied by the Alberta government’s refusal to disclose any of Mr. Skupowsky’s health records without a search warrant.
Applying for warrants is such an onerous task, often taking months of work, that investigations all but grind to a halt as a result, said Mr. Pendleton.
In the Skupowsky case, the accused eventually pleaded guilty to passport fraud and was jailed for two weeks before being deported to the U.S., where he also faced drug charges.
The case was one of dozens of identity scams that came to light as part of a wider criminal investigation into William Ernest Black, an Edmonton man who was arrested in 1999 after police discovered a canvas bag stuffed with nearly 280 Canadian documents — from birth certificates to passports — in the names of 83 people.
Mr. Black eventually pleaded guilty to eight counts of passport fraud and one of possession of stolen property and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
His scam demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the government bureaucracy that tracks the lives of Canadians. Using archival material easily available at libraries, Mr. Black assembled identity profiles based on newspaper obituaries. In particular, he exploited a specific type of death: those of children who died outside the provinces in which they were born.
Although police managed to arrest Mr. Black, many of the people who bought his false documents for as much as $37,000 were never caught. The few who were turned out to have extensive connections to organized crime, said Mr. Pendleton.
For a time, “the competition for dead children was so fierce that we had situations where two and three different crime groups were accessing the same dead child’s identity,” said Mr. Pendleton.
He cited another example of medical fraud involving a tourist from the Middle East who used her Canadian relative’s identity to get medical treatment from a hospital. In a third case, a woman suffering from complications as a result of breast-enhancement surgery used her sister’s health insurance to claim benefits.
“I assure you that this sort of thing is going on,” said Mr. Pendleton. “And what I can tell you is that they all have one thing in common. None of them were ever prosecuted. Even when we had detected them, they were never prosecuted. And I got the distinct impression that nobody really cared.”
And because so few cases of medical identity fraud reach the country’s courts, there is no clear picture of just how widespread the problem is, said Khaled El Emam, a University of Ottawa professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in electronic health information.
In the U.S., where a for-profit health-care system creates incentives for hospitals and insurance companies to root out identity theft, an estimated 15 per cent of claims are considered fraudulent, said Mr. El Emam.
Many provinces are trying to store more patient information in digital form so a patient’s different health providers can read and update it more easily. As more health records are stored in computerized databases, privacy experts are wrestling with how to strike a balance between keeping patient information secure, while allowing police and health planners reasonable access to such data for investigative or research purposes.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/20/world/americans-filching-free-health-care-in-canada.htmlAmericans Filching Free Health Care in Canada
By CLYDE H. FARNSWORTH,
Published: December 20, 1993
TORONTO, Dec. 19— Lacking a national health care system of their own, thousands of Americans are tapping into Canada's -- illegally.
"It's not an epidemic in any one person's practice," said Keith MacLeod, an obstetrician in Windsor, Ontario, across from Detroit, "but I would estimate that from 12 to 20 of my patients at any one time are ineligible Americans. And I'm just one of 520 doctors in Windsor, 23,000 in Ontario."
Dr. MacLeod, former president of the Essex County Medical Society, delivers about 400 babies a year.
A report prepared for Ontario's Health Minister indicated that from August 1992 to February 1993, 60,000 medical claims had been made on behalf of patients who held American drivers' licenses. The total number of improper claims in Ontario was estimated at 600,000.
Only legal residents qualify for free medical care in Canada, using plastic health cards for identification. Others are supposed to pay for medical services they may require, but many are submitting counterfeit, borrowed or fradulently obtained cards.
Loopholes and the lack of stringent controls are costing the provincial health care system as much as $691 million a year, the Ontario report found.
"The ministry is open to the fraudulent use of health care in all programs," the report said. "Almost no analytical tools exist at this time, and lenient registration policies encourage abuse by non- and new residents."
Joseph Cordiano, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of the Ontario Legislature, added, "Fraud is squandering our resources."
Although the encroachment is largely a border phenomenon, it has national scope because more than 90 percent of Canadians live and work within 100 miles of the United States. Other provinces have similar problems, but Ontario's size has given the issue national prominence.
In Canada, policing health care was always seen as more trouble than it was worth, and the authorities have long ignored cracks in the system. Doctors have little desire to be secret informers, and strict patient confidentiality laws have helped seal their lips.
And for years Canadians widely believed that their country was rich enough to look after all those who entered its portals.
But times are changing. In an era of mammoth budget deficits, to which free health care is a leading contributor, politicians of all stripes are eagerly seizing on ways to save money.
"In the past, we didn't pay enough attention to who was an Ontario resident," said Health Minister Ruth Grier, a member of the socialist-oriented New Democratic Party, which governs the province. "But now we have to make sure that we spend taxpayers' dollars as wisely as possible."
The provinces run Canada's health care system, which takes roughly a third of their budgets and is financed by payroll taxes, federal transfer payments and periodic borrowing.
About a quarter of the $17 billion spent on health care in Ontario, the richest and most populous province, is borrowed in the form of bonds sold to investors, many from the United States. Borrowing Costs Increase
The recent downgrading of Ontario's debt by two leading bond-rating services has suddenly raised the province's borrowing costs, thus compounding its financial problems.
Many reasons besides fraud contribute to Canada's rising medical costs: higher prices for medical technology, relatively long hospital stays and an oversupply of doctors, who are rewarded under a fee-for-service system when they see more patients and perform more procedures.
Yet fraud has drawn the spotlight, perhaps because it is an easier political target than some of the other factors.
Jim Wilson, the spokesman on health matters for the Conservative opposition in Ontario's Legislature, is urging stiffer verification procedures.
"We've lost 5,000 hospital beds in the last two years," he said. "There are ever-increasing waiting lists for cancer treatment. There is a health care crisis in Ontario, and the public has very little patience for Americans or others not entitled to use our health system clogging up our services."
