Earlier this month Rhonda Hackett wrote a great commentary piece in the Denver Post entitled “Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths”.
Rhonda is a Canadian who has been living in the US for the last 17 years, and wrote the column based on discussions she frequently has with Americans and Canadians alike on whether one system is better than the other. I’m not going to re-hash what she’s written, but I do want to point out a few key items:
- Taxes in Canada are only slightly higher than in the US.
- 31% of every dollar spent on health care in the US goes to non-medical costs (paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc.). Provincial single-pay systems in Canada operate with a 1% overhead.
- 10% of Canada’s GDP is spent on 100% of its population.
17% of USA’s GDP is spent on 85% of its population (and that’s not considering the millions with inadequate coverage). So in Canada everyone gets care and we still spend less overall than America which spends more but doesn’t cover everyone.
As a Canadian who’s lived within this system his whole life, I am in no means saying our system is perfect. But the idea that socialized medicine somehow delivers less quality and is always more expensive is incorrect.
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Living in a country with private health care the last six years, I am very impressed with how efficient it is. The overall quality is probably about the same as in Canada but things are just done faster. I can call in the morning for a doctor's appointment, and see him in that afternoon. For my daughter, I don't even make an appointment. (This is her regular doctor, not a walk-in clinic.) Total elapsed time between being diagnosed with a hernia and having the operation: 13 days. Because the Mrs. wanted me to wait until she was home from a business trip.
ReplyDeleteMind you, this is in a small country where they haven't reached the level of bureaucracy as the US. And yes, it's not fair. But at the moment, it's unfair in my favour.