SubscribeEven implementing an identical system across the entire U.S. is difficult, because of all the variation between states. Medicare, which is a single-payer system, pays out dramatically different average benefits to people living in different states, and many analyses have concluded that a major driving force behind that is variation in supply (like the number of per-capita hospital beds or number of specialists in an area)The Canadian healthcare system is administered on a province-by-province basis. There's lots of cross-province whinging, but it works well enough. For example, in Ontario I don't have to pay monthly premiums (as the article author talks about, in BC).
Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. A small news story from last month illustrates this:A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space. The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500 kilometers to the Montana hospital, the closest in the U.S., where the quadruplets were born on Sunday.There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more on the day of delivery than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies. Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.
Canada rations care on a first-come, first-served basis, with some exceptions for severe cases.I don't understand why people say this. It's true that you don't get healthcare in the US if you don't pay, but you also don't get food, clothing, housing, education, consumer goods, capital goods, anything, if you don't pay for them. So something that is rationed is synonymous with something that is sold. By this reasoning, if there is not a supply that matches or exceeds demand, then the item is rationed.
The US rations care on the basis of who can pay for it.
I can sum up this entire argument in one sentence.I've never been a big fan of this line of argument, but some people find it valid and compelling: you could substitute food, water, housing, education, and clothing for healthcare and have an argument of much the same validity. People suffer and die as surely from the need of these five things as they do from need of healthcare. What makes it special in your eyes?
The only people who oppose single-payer, Canadian-style healthcare are those who have never been without insurance, never been seriously ill, or never worked in the healthcare industry.
Peterborough 1 in 80 000First number is doctors accepting new patients, second is population of town/city.
Ajax 3 in 90 000
Kingston 5 in 117 000
Mississauga 107 in 668 000
Ottawa 19 in 812 000
Toronto 343 in 2 500 000
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posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:14 AM on February 13, 2008