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The senator shot back that Americans like their healthcare because they “judge quality and they judge innovation,” not because they pay more.

He then moved his attention to Sally Pipes, a representative from the right-leaning Pacific Research Institute seated next to Dr. Martin, and asked her why “42,000 Canadians come to the United States each year for health care?”

“Because they find that they’re on a waiting list for too long a period, and they feel that their health is at stake,” she said, adding that Canadian publications are known to advertise U.S. medical services such as MRIs.

Sen. Burr cut her off, saying “it’s a pretty fertile ground to market in,” before turning his focus back to Dr. Martin and asking if Canada had any advice on how to “equitably” manage its lengthy wait times.

Dr. Martin replied with a brief parable about the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the structure hosting the subcommittee hearing. She said she had spent 30 minutes waiting in line to pass through building security, before noticing that an alternate entrance had no queue at all.

“Sometimes it’s not about the amount of resources you have, but rather about how you organize people in order to use your queues most effectively,” she said.

“We believe that when you try to address wait times, you should do it in a way that benefits everyone, not just people who can afford to pay.”

It was at this point that Sen. Burr delivered the “how many Canadian patients on a waiting list die each year?” question.

Hearing Dr. Martin’s response, the Senator replied that “the American system has access to healthcare for everybody; it’s called the emergency room,” before turning his attention to the markedly less confrontational Danish representative.

According to a 2013 Fraser Institute report on Canadian wait times, the median wait time stands at 18.2 weeks. While Canadian wait times studies routinely acknowledge that waiting for care risks death or disability, there appear to be no definitive numbers on Canadian deaths attributed to healthcare backlogs.

In her Twittered summation of the exchange, Dr. Martin called it “a taste of senate politics for a Canadian doc,” noting it “makes the House of Commons look tame.”