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Comment by larrywright | Hacker News Reader

I'll ignore for a second that you asked the parent for evidence, and then proceeded to make a statement without providing any evidence yourself.

>> The numbers are vanishingly small

Maybe as a % of the overall Canadian population, perhaps. What about the % of critically ill? People with cancer? My aunt is an oncology nurse at one of the best hospitals in the nation, and she sees a lot of Canadians who come to the US for treatment that they can't get at home.

So yes, people with the flu or a broken arm probably aren't flocking here for care. People with serious illnesses? You bet they're coming here.

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But don't you think that if it were common for people with serious illnesses to come to the US, we'd see much more made of it than we do from those with a large vested interest in noting the influx?

Well, they do: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/09/the-canadian-patients%E2...

I think you can do better than Rush Limbaugh's favorite right wing advocacy group to back up your opinions.

Here's a study that puts the numer of Canadians using the US healthcare system at about 0.61%: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/3/19.full.html

That's EXACTLY what i was looking for, thanks!

I wasn't claiming that wasn't biased. It was stated that nobody was talking about it, but I don't think that's the case. I've heard it since the health care debates started in the U.S.

As for that study, I'm a little concerned that they only looked at a handful of states, and this little line at the bottom:

"The authors acknowledge financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (formerly the Medical Research Council of Canada) for this research."

My guess: both your source and mine are biased and flawed, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

That's a peer reviewed academic journal. Even if the authors have a bias, it's not comparable to the bias of a right wing advocacy group that gets financial support from the Koch Brothers.

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