Medical Tourism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism
The avoidance of waiting times is the leading factor for medical tourism from the UK, whereas in the US, the main reason is cheaper prices abroad.
It all depends on your priorities: trying to provide everyone as much care as they need, or making sure those who can afford it get all the care they want when they want it. After all, if being rich can't move you to the front of the line, what's the point of having money at all?
Many surgery procedures performed in medical tourism destinations cost a fraction of the price they do in the First World. For example a liver transplant that costs $300,000 USD in America costs about $91,000 USD in Taiwan. A large draw to medical travel is convenience and speed. Countries that operate public health-care systems are often so taxed that it can take considerable time to get non-urgent medical care. Using Canada as an example, an estimated 782,936 Canadians spent time on medical waiting lists in 2005, waiting an average of 9.4 weeks. Canada has set waiting-time benchmarks, e. g. 26 weeks for a hip replacement and 16 weeks for cataract surgery, for non-urgent medical procedures. (emphasis mine)
Canadians who don't want to wait can always go the US and pay to get it done. No one is stopping them. But there are a lot of Americans who find it a lot cheaper to travel to other countries and "get it taken care of" than to seek medical care here. They may have no choice, and if they can't afford it, or the travel, they may be at grave risk.
In First World countries like the United States medical tourism has large growth prospects and potentially destabilizing implications. A forecast by Deloitte Consulting published in August 2008 projected that medical tourism originating in the US could jump by a factor of ten over the next decade. An estimated 750,000 Americans went abroad for health care in 2007, and the report estimated that 1.5 million would seek health care outside the US in 2008. The growth in medical tourism has the potential to cost US health care providers billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Canadians that come here for treatment (even for advanced, experimental procedures only available in the US) do so only because they can afford it. Unfortunately, Americans who can't afford their own country's medical care can't return the favor.
As for your closing comment, it used to be fun, its just tiresome now. This forum used to be a marketplace, now its a battlefield.