<P> "' We did a deal with the University of Washington at Seattle' said Hutchinson...to take 50 bypass cases at $18,000 per head, almost $3,000 higher than the cost in Vancouver, with all the money (paid by) the province...In theory, the Seattle operations promised to take the heat off the Ministry of Health until a fourth heart surgery unit opened in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster . If the first batch of Seattle bypasses went smoothly...then the government planned to buy three or four more 50 - head blocks . But four weeks after announcing the plan, health administrators had to admit they were stumped .' As of now...we've had nine people sign up . The opposition party, the press, everybody's making a big stink about our waiting lists . And we've got (only) nine people signed up! The surgeons ask their patients and they say, "I'd rather wait", We thought we could get maybe two hundred and fifty done down in Seattle...but if nobody wants to go to Seattle, we're stuck,' ". </P> <P> An analysis using data from the 1996--1997 National Population Health Survey (NPHS--a large survey representative of the Canadian noninstitutionalized population, including 17,276 Canadian residents) reported that 0.5% sought medical care in the US in the previous year . Of these, less than a quarter had traveled to the U.S. expressly to get that care . This was supported by additional analysis performed from the American side, using a structured telephone survey of all ambulatory care clinical facilities located in specific heavily populated U.S. urban corridors bordering Canada and discharge data for 1994--1998 from major border states, and contacted key informants at each of U.S. News and World Report's "America's Best Hospitals" to inquire about the number of Canadians seen in both inpatient and outpatient settings . The authors characterized this rate of medical travel as "barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home" and that the results "do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States ." A separate report issued privately rather than in a peer reviewed journal by the conservative Fraser Institute think tank found that the percentage of Canadian patients who traveled abroad to receive non-emergency medical care was 1.1% in 2014, and 0.9% in 2013, with British Columbia being the province with the highest proportion of its citizens making such trips . </P> <P> Some Canadian politicians have traveled to the United States for treatment, which is viewed variously as ironic or cynical . Prime Minister Jean Chrétien traveled to the Mayo Clinic twice in 1999 for medical care . Chrétien allegedly kept the visits a secret, with one occurring during a publicly announced ski trip to Vancouver . Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach went to the United States for breast cancer surgery in June 2007 . Stronach's spokesperson Greg MacEachern was quoted in the article saying that the US was the best place to have this type of surgery done . Stronach paid for the surgery out of her own pocket . Prior to this incident, Stronach had stated in an interview that she was against two - tier health care . When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, needed cancer treatment, he went to the US to get it . In 2010, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams traveled to the US for heart surgery . </P> <P> In 2007, it was reported that Canada sent scores of pregnant women to the US to give birth . In 2007 a woman from Calgary who was pregnant with quadruplets was sent to Great Falls, Montana to give birth . An article on this incident states there were no Canadian hospitals with enough neo-natal intensive beds to accommodate the extremely rare quadruple birth . </P>

When was universal health care introduced in canada