diagnoses or prescriptions were rarely given, where the patients instead were almost always referred to specialists to receive treatment for their medical issues. According to the Fraser Institute, patients in Canada waited an average of 19.8 weeks to receive treatment, regardless of whether they were able to see a specialist or not. In the U.S., the average wait time for a first-time appointment is 24 days (≈3 times faster than in Canada); wait times for Emergency Room (ER) services averaged 24 minutes (more than 4x faster than in Canada); wait times for specialists averaged between 3–6.4 weeks (over 6x faster than in Canada). In response to these findings, the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an advocacy organization comprising more than 20,000 American medical professionals, identified statistical problems with the Fraser Institute's reporting. Namely, the report relies on a survey of Canadian physicians with a response rate of only 15.8%. Distributing these responses amongst the 12 specialties and ten provinces results in single-digit tallies for 63 per cent of the categories, and often only one physician falling into a given category. Conversely, a study conducted by the Canadian Institute for Health Information indicated that Canada has been successful in delivering care within medically recommended wait times. In the U.S., patients on Medicaid, the low-income government programs, can wait up to a maximum of 12 weeks to see specialists (12 weeks less than the average wait time in Canada). Because Medicaid payments are low, some have claimed that some doctors do not want to see Medicaid patients in Canada. For example, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, specialists agreed to spend one afternoon every week or two at a Medicaid clinic, which meant that Medicaid patients had to make appointments not at the doctor's office, but at the clinic, where appointments had to be booked months in advance. A 2009 study found that on average the wait in the United States to see a medical specialist is 20.5 days. In a 2009 survey of physician appointment wait times in the United States, the average wait time for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in the country as a whole was 17 days. In Dallas, Texas the wait was 45 days (the longest wait being 365 days). Nationwide across the U.S. the average wait time to see a family doctor was 20 days. The average wait time to see a family practitioner in