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

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

I don't think that the US should get hung up on wait times in Canada as we go forward with reform. I think we need to see what works in other countries and then adopt what we can use. We actually should look to France for cues on system design.

[azhiker96, BSN, RN]

I don't think that the US should get hung up on wait times in Canada as we go forward with reform. I think we need to see what works in other countries and then adopt what we can use. We actually should look to France for cues on system design.

I absolutely agree with this! We do need to see what works and what we can tolerate in a healthcare model. I found this http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/article_details.aspx?pubID=4971

article. What really interested me was this section,

Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, and Switzerland provide what many Canadians might see as the impossible dream. In each of these nations, individuals are guaranteed access to health insurance regardless of their ability to pay. And each of those individuals, regardless of their income or wealth, has access to the health care they need without waiting lists. Equally importantly, the cost of these health care systems is, on an age-adjusted basis, similar to or less than Canada's, so Canadians need not dig deeper into their pockets to achieve this sort of access.

In these nations, patients are free to choose for themselves whether their care provider will be a public or private hospital, all under the terms of the public insurance contract. They must, however, share in the cost of the care they consume, which encourages them to make more informed decisions about when and where it is best to access the health care system. Patients in these nations are also free to purchase the care they desire privately if they wish to do so.

While patients in these seven nations bear more personal financial responsibility for the care they consume, they also enjoy more freedom in determining who will pay for and who will deliver the care they need. The result is that patients enjoy access to care without waiting lists.

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

The Fraser institute is Canada's version of Heritage Foundation. I think it offers food for thought but I am always suspect of any health care resource that falls back on a moral hazard argument as it can lead to ever greater cost sharing without consideration of the illness.

Care for chronic illness needs to have first dollar coverage without cost sharing. This approach saves health care dollars and lives.