Canada's health system is as good or better than the US new research suggests

[pickledpepperRN]

Health care just as good, half as much as in U.S., report says

Canada's health system is as good or better than that of the United States and is delivered at half the cost, new research suggests.

A review in the inaugural issue of online medical journal Open Medicine, which was launched yesterday by a group of doctors who left the Canadian Medical Association Journal last year over an editorial dispute, examined the results of 38 major studies that compared health outcomes of patients in the two countries.

It found that while the United States spent an average of $7,129 U.S. per person on health care in 2006, compared with $2,956 U.S. per person in Canada, more studies favoured the latter country in terms of morbidity and mortality. They covered a wide range of diseases and conditions, including cancer and coronary artery disease....

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=b4ad7870-f58f-4772-8e9d-a10d2dc163db&k=13532

[pickledpepperRN]

Health minister rebuffs doctors' call for two-tier health care

Health Minister Tony Clement has rebuffed the Canadian Medical Association in its call for greater privatization of medicare.

Clement said the federal government will not allow so-called dual practice, which allows doctors to work in both the public and private health systems. In an interview, he referred to such an arrangement as a two-tier system....

... The minister was responding to a letter from the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, which called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to uphold the single-tier system.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070801/x080121A.html

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

canada's medicare system:

it's all about equality for canadians with disabilities

the preservation and strengthening of canada's medicare system is very much an equality issue for people with disabilities.

one of the most important roles of the public sector is to promote equality. and there is no one-single public policy instrument in canada that promotes equality more so than our public medicare system.

since the inception of medicare, canadian society has become much more inclusive of, accessible to and accepting of people with various types of disabilities....

http://www.trudeausociety.com/home/health/2008/03/25/01121.html

[2bNurses22]

but falls short with tertiary care. As an example, I just treated a Canadian citizen that came to the US for a Whipple procedure. It cost him about $110k but it was worth it for him. He said in Canada it would have been months before he was considered for treatment and even then his post treatment outcome would have been well below US standards of care.

Probably because they do the same crap the U.S. does. Why isn't there more doctors there? Is it because they can't afford equipment and there's not enough doctors? Graduate more and shave off useless government jobs. Why not consolidate middle/high school? Make the classes bigger (teachers unions keep them small to claim shortage) and require less subjects for graduation. You do the same old classes in college. There's some money that could be used for funding for more resources into the medical field. It's all about allocation of resources. You find that in any economics book. Some bad ones are school (as I've mentioned), government administrative bs, lawyering, and marketing (big waste)

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

Small class sizes are positively correlated with increased student achievement. (See American Teacher May/June 2008 p. 7) It is not the only answer but it is a big piece of the puzzle.

Others include:

High quality curriculum (more than memorization of facts...)

Intensive assistance to high poverty schools

Focus on developing quality teachers

Emphasis on early reading instruction and intervention

safe/orderly schools

Decreased class sizes are a strategy that helps achieve these goals.

[2bNurses22]

Small class sizes are positively correlated with increased student achievement.

I'd like to see proof. I took a class with 70+ students and it doesn't effect learning at all. If so, how? Look at UCSD. 200+ students yet the students learn. Btw, less teachers = better teachers getting hired. I believe though that the teacher has not much significance at middle/high school level and beyond. We need to give kids solutions manuals to math books. They help a ton. Every person I know that has them say it helps. Look at college requirements. There's online classes and now instructors can handle more than 6 classes. One of the best universities offer online MBA programs, or half online/campus, and even a Pharm.D online.

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

I provided the direct reference to the article. (It is available online...) The research shows that for American children increased class sizes adversely affect performance and learning.

There are differences between adult learners and child learners in both learning styles and abilities.

[Katie82, RN]

No cap of 2800 was suggested; medicaid for all is the SOLUTION, not the problem. And MEDICAID patients are taxpayers. You need to invest in reading time. Much thanks!!!!!

I work as a case manager with Medicaid patients in North Carolina and I can't identify a single adult recipient in my case load works and pays taxes. Children's Health Plan is another matter, where recipients are often children of the "working poor", but once again, the recipient does not work. In my state, if you earn enough to actually pay taxes, you earn too much to qualify for MA.

[Katie82, RN]

[quote name=.Additionally, millions more are people who can afford health insurance, but exercise the great American past-time of CHOICE, and opt out, possibly saving that money for an HSA (those people technically are not insured, but still have money available for health care), or use that money to purchase a more expensive home, etc. Suddenly they are alleged victims when they have to sell the home to pay for health care, when the truth is that their home was really their insurance policy, a policy they were living in instead of buying from a broker.

[/quote]

I wrote a research paper on the uninsured in my graduate program, and this is true. I agree that there are a lot of uninsured in this country, but when I polled many for my paper the reason for being uninsured reflected a need to spend premium money on other things. Healthcare should be a priority, not a luxury. I know too many of my children's friends who simply ignore the need for insurance because it is more important to have a new car or a bigger house. Stupid move if you are gambling on staying healthy.

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

It would be far easier to make health care a priority if we mandated funding participation through a combined income/VAT based premium system and junked the current employment based premium system.

[azhiker96, BSN, RN]

We should model on the Canadian system? I thought Cuba was the gold standard! LOL

Now matter who pays the bill, our costs will continue to rise as long as we continue to allow lawyers to feed on it. We need to eliminate percentage contingency fees and let lawyers get paid like everyone else, either by the hour or the job. It's ridiculous to allow them to siphon off huge amounts of awards that they argued were owed to their client.

[Annisme]

The Canadian government posts their statistics for such things as wait times for care on the government website. They have specific links for wait times and even had a multi-year research project they funded ($2.5 million) to try to find out how to cut the wait times. The result of that study was...they didn't know.

http://www.healthservices.gov.bc.ca/waitlist/cardiac.html

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

In the provided link it seems that wait times are long unless the patient needs the surgery ASAP.

I would guess half wait less than the median wait time because those are included in the hals done without delay due to medical necessity.

...Cardiac Surgery

Half of all heart or cardiac surgery in B.C. is done on an emergency basis and without delay. According to the Median Wait Time, all the people who have had their surgery in the past three months, half waited less than the median wait time....

http://www.healthservices.gov.bc.ca/waitlist/cardiac.html