Lack of Competition Crippling Canadian Care

Posted by Grace-Marie Turner in Health Care, Single-Payer Follies on Dec 5th, 2008 | no responses

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Canada's refusal to consider increased private sector involvement and competition in health care has left the country struggling with a system burdened with lengthy waiting lists and aging medical technology, despite being one of the most expensive systems among industrialized nations, concludes the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute's Michael Walker and Nadeem Esmail in "How Good is Canadian Health Care?"

Canada spends more on health care on an age-adjusted basis than any other industrialized nation with a universal health access system except Iceland and Switzerland, yet it ranks near the bottom in terms of access to physicians and new medical technology.

Most notable about this international comparison of outcomes is that all of the countries that have fewer years of life lost to disease and that have lower mortality amenable to health care than Canada also have private alternatives to the public health care system, including user fees at the point of access to care.

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