From the Denver POST
If the only way we compared the two systems – U.S. versus Canada – was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America’s health care problems…
As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everybody is covered.
Not so incidentally, single-payer systems run by the U.S. government can approach Canadian efficiency. Medicare and Social Security run at less than 3% overhead.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.
What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.
Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it. While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
RTFA. The article continues on to examine more myths…and lies.
Thanks, Cinaedh
#72 Traaxx,
You know when they openly say they aren’t going to pay for the expense items in health care, that rationing is coming.
They will control everything you eat, drink, or do all in the name of the common good and universal health care.
Who exactly are “they”? The government as opposed to the health insurance companies? Do you not see that the rationing is already here?
Right now, the rationing is done by people whose charter explicitly requires them to deny you care at every opportunity. And, they’re good at it.
If we get a better system in place, it will be run by people whose charter is to provide the best possible care. And, they’ll likely be bad at it.
Still the results of the latter will be better than the former as even incompetent people do at least make an attempt to do their jobs.
Besides, remember, there are government employees who actually do their job well. I’ve never lost a piece of mail in the post office. I still find the results of the postal service better than Fedex or UPS. And the post office is cheaper.
As for who will be deciding what is and is not covered, most government programs in other countries have panel discussions with doctors, patient advocacy groups, government representatives and others who all get together in an open forum and discuss issues like life sustaining care, quality adjusted life years (QALYs), cost per QALY, etc.
Right now, the rationing is done by wealth.
And, wealth may not always help. Sometimes, it may get you stuck on life support for 8 months until your wealth runs out before finally someone pulls the plug allowing the meat that was once you to finally die.
Sometimes, with wealth comes unnecessary medication. Despite consuming 56% of the world’s medication with just 4% of the world’s population, the U.S. still has the worst overall stats among the developed democratic nations of the world.
Sometimes, with wealth comes unnecessary surgery. We have the highest rate of cesarean sections. Because of this, we have actually removed a lot of the selective force for smaller heads at birth, thus causing more c-sections in future generations. Soon we may become a race of humans that cannot give birth vaginally at all.
Before we’re off bashing other the system of other nations I think it’s prudent to take a long gaze in the mirror to see the decades of failures in our American system.
Free markets are great but what they’ve left us with is corporate health care that’s more respondant to the shareholder than the patient.
I surely believe there are many good physicians out there who are just working within the system to do the best job they can.
But when much of the system, i.e. insurance, is predicated on making sure they cover as few cases as possible (what happened to the thousands I’ve put into my plans over the years?), clearly free market healthcare isn’t working.
The soundbites out of opponents to basically any kind of change here like to present doomsday scenarios that simply haven’t happened in other countries.
They like to quote 6 mos for a hip replacement while totally ignoring the number of Americans going into bankruptcy due to medical bills.
They’d rather bash another system than propose anything new for us. Meanwhile benefits shrink to nothing and costs continue to rise. Insurers get richer and the general public goes broke trying to make up the difference.
Yea that’s a wonderful system we Americans have. Good for us, it’s free market. YEA! Like that proves anything.
hey to break it to yaz, but its not a
repub-dem problem..
our entire government is corrupted to the core. until we address that problem, any
“government solution” will result in more
of the same. -we the people, being taken to the cleaners and 10+ generations worth of our kids will foot the bill..
-s
doesn’t we eliminate the rampant corruption in our
government, from the white house on down,
ANYTHING our gov attempts to run will
doh.. bloody fingers are not working yet
can a SysOp please delete the paragraph below the -s in post #83 please?
thank you.
-s
#83 – soundwash,
hey to break it to yaz, but its not a
repub-dem problem..
I don’t agree with the rest of your post, but this much is true. In 1974, it was Richard Nixon who introduced a plan that would have created a government health insurance policy into which anyone could buy on a sliding scale based on the person’s income. It would have competed with our other insurers. By now, most of our crappy insurers would likely be out of business.
#66
By your description, Canada is such a wonderful place….and yet you choose to live in the US.
Do ya think that what ever it is that draws you to stay in the United States may be associated and/or intertwined with all the those things you think are horrible about the US?
Otherwise, you’d have the same opportunities in Canada and would have stayed in that wonderful country….albeit, to our loss.
Fact: Canadian cell phone companies make you sign a 3-year contract for service.
Fact: US cell phone companies only make you sign a 2-year contract for service.
Does this mean that either type of system is better or worse? But this example makes as much sense as many of the arguments here about health care.
# 62 LibertyLover said, in part:
Huh? I suppose they all drive Welfare Cadillacs too.
Then, just a little while later, in #68, he says:
Make up your mind! Also, what about the phrase in the preamble about promoting the general Welfare?
And a note to #4, ridin the short bus; it’s spelled rhetoric. (I think it’s spelled strangely because it’s from ancient Greek.) Just a word to the wise.
Here’s to your very good health, everybody! (Clink!)
Free markets??? You’re kidding, right? There are no free markets, anywhere, at least not on a large/meaningful scale. Governments of all persuasions can’t leave the markets alone–otherwise their cronies^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsupporters might go broke.
Talking about health care makes me sick. The present US system doesn’t work. I have yet to see a model that does work.
I do know that when I was young, doctors were well off, and many were wealthy. Then again, large cash flow is not wealth. Nor is it health.
As a sysadmin, I’d be happy to provide free health care for your machine(s). Seriously. It’s just that all of my providers want money.
#89 – Brad,
Excellent points. As a unix geek myself, I also get the ^H reference. For future reference though, you can also use the HTML strike tag to make your example look like this instead.
Governments of all persuasions can’t leave the markets alone–otherwise their
croniessupporters might go broke.To do this, what you would type is <strike>cronies</strike>
(I hope I got that right or I’ll look foolish for trying to show you how to do it.)
Regarding the health care system (or lack thereof) in the U.S., here’s another article stating why we need this sort of thing. In case you were unaware of just how broken our system is or think that you’re covered because you have insurance, check this out in today’s Times.
http://tinyurl.com/looauy
That tinyurl generator plugin for firefox is really not my friend lately. Here’s that link again. Let’s hope this one works. It did for me, for the moment at least.
http://tinyurl.com/knduvp
In one of the worst economies in U.S. history,I have become one of those worthless bumbs,who just ‘simply does not work’. After working for one employer for fourteen years,I was laid off.
Health insurance was lost,along with only source of income. Twelve hundred applications,have resulted in finding nothing.
At this point,I would be happy to find a place to earn enough for the basic necessities of life. I don’t give a damn, if the employer provides no health insurance or benefits.
Reduced wages are fine. After all,isn’t this the mindset the republicans wanted? If I got hungry enough to apply for food stamps,that would be entitlement. We can’t have that either now-can we? If I got seriously sick or had an accident,pain would force me to an emergency room-not the quest to be a free loader. With no source of income,I don’t have cash to contribute toward a hospital executive’s new Mercedes.