Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Health Act in 1984 and established a single-payer, publicly-financed health care system. To ensure a true government monopoly (is there any other kind?) Canadian provinces outlawed private health insurance.
Chaoulli v. Quebec UPDATE (June 9, 2005): In a 4 to 3 decision, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down Quebec's law that prohibits private medical insurance.
Private medical clinic opens in Montreal ...it answers, "an ever-increasing demand from the public for greater accessibility and quality of health services." - October 13, 2004 [CTV.ca]
Need surgery? Here's how long you'll wait "It's inhuman. The quality of my life is horrible and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it." - Jason Fekete, July 28, 2004 [Calgary Herald]
Docs, nurses fed up Canadian doctors and nurses are fed up with inter-governmental "bickering" that is dragging out wait times and causing more pain and suffering for patients. - July 28, 2004 [Winnipeg Sun]
Free Health Care? ...in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. - Walter E. Williams, July 24, 2004 [CATO]
The truth about Canada's ailing health-care system All the major candidates in Canada's recent national election acknowledged that the country's health-care system is failing Canadians. - Robert J. Cihak, July 13, 2004 [The Seattle Times]
Health-care crisis looms, even with new money Canada's health-care system is "five to 10 years" from the breaking point -- even with cash injections from government, says the new president of the B.C. Medical Association. - Doug Alexander, July 5, 2004 [Vancouver Sun]
Emergency room delays a strong campaign factor "Go into the emergency room it is the most pitiful piece of work you ever seen in your life." - David Bruser, June 22, 2004 [Toronto Star]
Canadian Health Care in Crisis Analyst visits NC to describe how single-payer health care really works in practice. - Donna Martinez, June 17, 2004 [Carolina Journal]
Quebec cancer patients sue over wait Women waited months for radiation; lawsuit could cost system $50-million. - Ingrid Peritz, March 11, 2004 [The Globe and Mail]
Health care: no waiting lists 'You get knee surgery within two days ... try and get that in human hospitals.' Canada's [private] pet health-insurance industry is projected to grow at roughly 50 per cent a year... - Robert Scalia, November 30, 2003 [Montreal Gazette]
Burnout is now doctors' ailment Almost half of Canadian doctors say they're burned out, emotionally exhausted and blame medicine for putting a drain on their family life. - Karen Palmer, August 20, 2003 [Toronto Star]
New MRI clinic in row over poaching While she insists she's not making any money off the venture, she says it provides an income allowance for her and her husband, the other principal in the company. - Theresa Boyle and Robert Benzie, July 28, 2003 [Toronto Star]
Price Controls and Overall Drug Spending The Canadian system, however, tends to push up overall spending on prescription drugs, despite the low prices for some brand name ones. - John Melby, July 2, 2003 [Buckeye Institute]
Socialized medicine, although of poor quality, is very expensive;
Political compromise is the result;
Socialized medicine is both a consequence and a great contributor to the idea that economic conditions should be equalized by coercion. - Pierre Lemieux [The Freeman]
Canadian Health Care ...if Canadians knew as much as they think they do about the economic and moral workings of Medicare, they might not be as enthusiastic as they are about their cherished right to 'free' health care. - Andrei Kreptul, August 30, 2000 [Mises]
Loved to Death: America's Unresolved Health-Care Crisis As Canada's national government slashes spending on medical care in order to reduce the deficit, local provinces are reducing medical staff. In Ontario, pregnant women are being sent to Detroit because no obstetricians are available. Specialists of all kinds are in short supply. Patients have to wait eight weeks for an MRI, ten weeks for referral to a specialist, and four months for heart bypass surgery. - Michael J. Hurd, November 1997 [Liberty Haven]
Health of the State (commentary by a cancer survivor) I tell you this not to alarm you, to elicit sympathy, or to bore you. I tell you because the episode has been, for me, a salutary lesson (just in case I needed one) in why the government should not be allowed anywhere near a syringe, a dressing, a scalpel, an oxygen mask, a tissue sample anything to do with health.
When you see bull - call it! The very first article he listed should be read. A contract was canceled because the private company raised the fee 20%. It went on to say that patients would be taken care of at other facilities. All the rest of the articles are too old, all the way back to 2000, to have any significance. As far as Quebec dentists dropping out of the system, the US doesn't include dentists in any plan!
What do we pay for, anyway?As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.
Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems 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. Frankly, both sides often get things wrong when trotting out Canada to further their respective arguments.
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.
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.
There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks ? unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.
Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.
There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.
Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.
Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments.If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.
Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.
Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.
Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada.
From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.
And these are just some of the myths about the Canadian health care system. While emulating the Canadian system will likely not fix U.S. health care, it probably isn't the big bad "socialist" bogeyman it has been made out to be.
It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits.
For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month.
She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty ? who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care ? will soon sport a new, high-tech knee.
Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.
More on how much the Canadians love their healthcare system here.....
August 18, 2009
Oliver Stone revealing 'Secret History of America'
Oliver Stone is making his most ambitious stab at American history yet.
The controversial director is creating a 10-part documentary series for Showtime titled "Secret History of America."
Narrated by Stone, the series promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years," according to Showtime.
Subjects will include President Harry Trumans decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to "the fierce struggle between war and peace in Americas national security complex."
The project includes "newly discovered facts and accounts" from the Kennedy administration, the Vietnam War and the great changes in Americas role in the world since the fall of Communism in the 1980s.
Through this epic 10-hour series, which I feel is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation, I can only hope a change in our thinking will result," Stone said in a statement.
The director of other historical dramas like "JFK," "Nixon" and "Platoon" is currently working on "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" and couldn't be reached for further comment. The sure-to-be-discussed project will premiere on the network in 2010.
"We are very happy that Oliver Stone has chosen Showtime as the home for his provocative series about key unknown moments of American history, Showtime programming president Robert Greenblatt said. Not only has his name become synonymous with visionary filmmaker, but Oliver is also a fascinating storyteller always striving to shed new light on the human experience. His continuing curiosity about real events of the 20th century has now led him to a documentary series unlike any other, which is why it's perfect for our premium audience."
"Secret History of America" as seen through the eyes of one of the biggest liberals in America and his interpertition of "the facts'. Did you notice he said "I can only hope a change in our thinking will result." He hopes for a change to the way he thinks perhaps? I'm sure there will be those who will fall hook, line, and sinker for this documentary and you have the privelige of paying for it too.
Sorry AB I meant to POST this article. I was going to respond to your message and went away for a minute, came back and had found this on Drudge. Instead of returning to index I copied it to your message. Again sorry and please excuse.
