How do you fix this problem, though? Unless the claim is that the triage system is flawed (i.e. patients are being treated in the wrong order, and patients who don't need treatment are using resources that should go to these other patients), the only way to reduce these numbers would be to increase the number of doctors/hospitals/etc to cover the shortfall.
While it might seem like you should obviously spend more if you can save lives, there is obviously a trade off... how many of those people would have died with treatment anyway, and what would you give up if you spent more money on health care?
By itself, this data doesn't tell us if anything is being done wrong here. It could be that the triage system is perfect, and these people who are dying were on waitlists because they couldn't be saved by treatment anyway.
I know there is a gut instinct that we should spend whatever it takes to save every single life, but there has to be limits. Is spending 100 million dollars for a 5% chance to save a 60 year old worth it? It sounds horrible to ask the question, but it has to be asked.
So first, obviously waitlists beyond something like a week mean the capacity of the medical system is insufficient. Apparently some waitlists are 9 years long, and the average waitlist is 30 weeks, or more than 7 months.
The problems also aren't limited to people dying, there are other problems that have worse outcomes due to delay. Once cataract leads to blindness, for example, odds of fixing it plummet. That blindness is easily preventable. But above all many cases of permanent, preventable, pain. Or, cancer becomes less treatable the longer diagnosis takes, and this is especially bad in younger people.
Also waitlists have been growing for over 15 years, indicating that not only is medical capacity insufficient, the problem is getting worse every year. So increasing spending to the point it stops getting worse seems like the bare minimum that should be done. I'd say that's the answer to your question of how to fix it.
> waitlists beyond something like a week mean the capacity of the medical system is insufficient
It means that the medical system doesn't have unlimited money/resources.
Voters hate reality: medical systems grow to take as much resources as you can give them. Waiting lists are often accepted in situations where a dollar limit is disliked.
Noone wants to say what a life or procedure is worth, yet a medical system has to indirectly do so because of finite resources (taxation, insurance premiums, donations).
Oh no! A big scary number without context. Meanwhile in the US "One study from the USA estimated that financial toxicity affects approximately 137 million (56%) of adults"
How does this compare to other counties with first world healthcare? This raw number means nothing to me because I can't tell if it's even particularly bad statistically.
> In Fiscal Year 2024/25, there were 222 booking records cancelled and removed f rom the Interior Health (IH) wait list due to the death of the patient while they waited f or their surgical date. There were 59 various types of procedures cancelled due to patient death; Cataracts had 86 (39%), followed by Arthroplasty Knee Replacements 17 (8%)
Also, for this particular regional health authority, only 38% of these wait time were above the target.
> 85 bookings (38%) had been waiting over the clinical benchmark wait time target for that surgery type at the date of patient death.
So yes, most of these death have nothing to do with excessive wait time of patient whose death would have been preventable with another system.
86 people died while waiting for a cataract operation, 17 people died while waiting for a knee operation... OMG, Canadian healthcare is deathly terrible!!!
> The website is of a "free market think tank", which other project is a video series called "Survivors of Socialism". Yeah.
Ah yes, they also have testimonies of people having being saved by moving the the US healthcare system, unironically explaining how it's much better than the Canadian one…
Readit News
US life expectancy (2025): 78.4 years
Alaska life expectancy (2025): 74.7 years
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/can/can...
https://indiadatamap.com/2025/11/03/usa-life-expectancy-2025...
While it might seem like you should obviously spend more if you can save lives, there is obviously a trade off... how many of those people would have died with treatment anyway, and what would you give up if you spent more money on health care?
By itself, this data doesn't tell us if anything is being done wrong here. It could be that the triage system is perfect, and these people who are dying were on waitlists because they couldn't be saved by treatment anyway.
I know there is a gut instinct that we should spend whatever it takes to save every single life, but there has to be limits. Is spending 100 million dollars for a 5% chance to save a 60 year old worth it? It sounds horrible to ask the question, but it has to be asked.
The problems also aren't limited to people dying, there are other problems that have worse outcomes due to delay. Once cataract leads to blindness, for example, odds of fixing it plummet. That blindness is easily preventable. But above all many cases of permanent, preventable, pain. Or, cancer becomes less treatable the longer diagnosis takes, and this is especially bad in younger people.
Also waitlists have been growing for over 15 years, indicating that not only is medical capacity insufficient, the problem is getting worse every year. So increasing spending to the point it stops getting worse seems like the bare minimum that should be done. I'd say that's the answer to your question of how to fix it.
It means that the medical system doesn't have unlimited money/resources.
Voters hate reality: medical systems grow to take as much resources as you can give them. Waiting lists are often accepted in situations where a dollar limit is disliked.
Noone wants to say what a life or procedure is worth, yet a medical system has to indirectly do so because of finite resources (taxation, insurance premiums, donations).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9731797/
"Died on waitlists" != died from not having the procedure they were waiting for
> while waiting for surgeries or diagnostic scans.
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> In Fiscal Year 2024/25, there were 222 booking records cancelled and removed f rom the Interior Health (IH) wait list due to the death of the patient while they waited f or their surgical date. There were 59 various types of procedures cancelled due to patient death; Cataracts had 86 (39%), followed by Arthroplasty Knee Replacements 17 (8%)
Also, for this particular regional health authority, only 38% of these wait time were above the target.
> 85 bookings (38%) had been waiting over the clinical benchmark wait time target for that surgery type at the date of patient death.
So yes, most of these death have nothing to do with excessive wait time of patient whose death would have been preventable with another system.
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The website is of a "free market think tank", which other project is a video series called "Survivors of Socialism". Yeah.
I guess this is inducing a genetic fallacy, the number might be accurate anyway, but here's the salt.
Edit to add: OK, here's one sample report from their own FOI: https://secondstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/BC-%E2%8...
86 people died while waiting for a cataract operation, 17 people died while waiting for a knee operation... OMG, Canadian healthcare is deathly terrible!!!
Ah yes, they also have testimonies of people having being saved by moving the the US healthcare system, unironically explaining how it's much better than the Canadian one…