Well, as many around me know I'm majoring in Political Science, Canadian, and want to be a doctor. One of the topics that comes up a lot is Canadian health care. I just want to provide an interesting article about Canadian health care and jsut say this. The Canadian health care system has been great for my family and I've never heard any horror stories unlike ones that you sometimes hear in America. At the same time however, I want to acknowledge how fantastic the health care in America is also.
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Canadian survival advantage
Devereaux said the Canadian public is barraged by people who argue that the solution to problems in the health-care system is to move toward two-tiered medicine and for-profit health-care delivery.
He said the researchers in the meta-study wanted to provide facts that can be used to make decisions about the system, instead of the debate being steered by beliefs and ideologies.
Researchers began by asking the question: Are there differences in death and disease rates in patients suffering from similar medical conditions treated in Canada versus those treated in the United States?
Overall, 14 of the 38 studies showed better outcomes in Canada, while five favoured the United States. The other 19 studies showed equivalent or mixed results in the two countries.
"What it [the study] shows is that despite an enormous investment in money, we do not see better health outcomes [in the U.S.]," Devereaux said.
"And importantly, where our two systems do diverge is that America has a mixture of private insurance in terms of the funding for health care whereas in Canada we have medicare system for hospital and physician services.
"The medicare system allows us enormous efficiencies in terms of cost-saving relative to private insurance."
Some explanations for the results include the fact that U.S. health care has administrative inefficiencies that public funding — without multiple competing insurance companies — eliminates. Canadians also save on prescription drug costs because drug prices are controlled.
Few uninsured patients in the United States, who probably suffer the worst quality care, were included in the studies examined.
Devereaux said the Canadian health-care system has problems and needs improvement, "but certainly using medicare funding and not-for-profit delivery is the best way to actually maximize health outcomes and in a cost-effective manner."
