Here's an interesting article that debunks the myth of the Canadian system being inferior to what we have here in the US...


Exerpt:

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine, saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long queues.

The allegations are wrong by almost every measure, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other independent studies published during the past five years. While delays do occur for non-emergency procedures, data indicate that Canada's system of universal health coverage provides care as good as in the U.S., at a cost 87 percent less for each person.

"There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care," said Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health- policy specialist and pediatrician who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. "That's just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much more contained costs."

Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer, according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations.

Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19 countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths.

Infant Mortality

The Canadian mortality rate from asthma is one quarter of the U.S.'s, and the infant mortality rate is 34 percent lower, OECD data show. People in Canada are also 21 percent more apt to survive five years after a liver transplant.

Yet the Canadian "bogeyman," as U.S. President Barack Obama called it at an Aug. 11 gathering in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, may have "all but defeated" the idea of a public option in the U.S., said Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana, introduced on Sept. 16 compromise health-care legislation that, unlike other House and Senate bills, omits a government-backed choice for the uninsured living in the U.S. who can"t afford private coverage.

Insurance Mandate

Private insurers, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession fear the "market power" of a public plan, Reinhardt said. They "deployed certain think tanks to find horror stories around the world that can be used to persuade Americans a public health plan in the U.S. would bring rationing."

Given that Congress is likely to pass a mandate to cover the uninsured, Americans forced to buy policies will be left with no alternative to coping with "double-digit rate increases" on commercial premiums, Reinhardt said.

"Both systems ration medical care," he said. "In Canada, they make people wait. In the U.S., we make people pay."

Fifty-four percent of chronically ill Americans reported skipping a test or treatment, neglecting to go to a doctor when sick, or failing to fill a prescription because of the cost, according to a 2008 survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that focuses on health care, and pollster Harris Interactive. That was more than twice the number in Canada, data from those New York-based groups showed.

Payment Worries

As the price of health care in the U.S. has risen three to four times faster than the rate of inflation, surveys show that Americans have become concerned they won't be able to pay medical bills. Forty-three percent of consumers in a June poll by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor said they worried they might not be able to afford care, even with insurance.

"Canadians value fairness, and they cannot conceive of a system in which someone can't get health care," said Wendy Levinson, a Canadian who runs the department of medicine at the University of Toronto and worked in the U.S. from 1979 to 2001.

The U.S. spent $7,290 on health care for each person in 2007, according to the latest OECD data. Canada came in at $3,895. The U.S. also devoted the highest percentage of gross domestic product to health care, 16 percent, OECD numbers show. Canada's expenditure was 10.1 percent.

Canada's system consists of 10 provincial and three territorial nonprofit insurance plans that cover all citizens, including those with pre-existing conditions. It operates like Medicare, the U.S. program for the elderly and disabled. In Canada, the government uses taxpayer funds to pay claims by doctors, who mostly work in private practice or for a hospital and are paid fees for their services.

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