Why do people say we should copy and paste Canada's health care system?

Canada isn’t very good at health care… costs are $10 billion for my home province and only some of the sick are treated properly…but it seems that most other countries are worse

@talljasperman I thought maybe as much….I’m still not sure why people say that. I mean it is not that many people I heard it from, just a few. It got me thinking what they had meant exactly.

Most people you said are not even treated properly. Do you have personal experience with that or data?

It was my understanding that Canada’s system works very well. I know France’s does. Any other Canadians want to weigh in?

@Mr_A personal experience…we are not as nice as other claim to be… We treat the disabled as lower class citizens and reduce the opportunities given to them…. Dishwashers and assistants are as high as you can go unless you can keep your medical information from your doctor, university, employers…

@janbb No clue but that was the impression I was under when I heard this…...I have never heard of people talk about France though.

@talljasperman Not to be rude or anything, but are you basing your opinion and view of Canada’s health care system completely of the personal experience or because you truly feel and know that it has problems?

@Mr_A both… I watch the news and I live in Canada

@Mr_A

RE: France (from a couple of conservative publications, BTW)

“France’s infant death rate is 3.9 per 1,000 live births, compared with 7 in the U.S., and average life expectancy is 79.4 years, two years more than in the U.S. The country has far more hospital beds and doctors per capita than America, and far lower rates of death from diabetes and heart disease. The difference in deaths from respiratory disease, an often preventable form of mortality, is particularly striking: 31.2 per 100,000 people in France, vs. 61.5 per 100,000 in the U.S.”

“65% of French citizens express satisfaction with their system, compared with 40% of U.S. residents. And France spends just 10.7% of its gross domestic product on health care, while the U.S. lays out 16%, more than any other nation.”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042070.htm

“In France, by contrast, you walk to the corner pharmacist, get either a prescription or over-the-counter medication right away, shell out a dozen or so euros, and you’re done. If you need a doctor, it’s not hard to get an appointment within a day or three, you make payments for everything (including X-rays) on the spot, and the amounts are routinely less than the co-payments for U.S. doctor visits. I’ve had back X-rays, detailed ear examinations, even minor oral surgery, and never have I paid more than maybe €300 for any one procedure. ”
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french-health-care

@Mr_A sometimes the only way to survive is to be misdiagnosed and to get labeled as ill… and you can’t get undiagnosed most of the time… so the best careers are kept away from you….(personal experience) and what I witnessed in Canada makes me wish that I had other options

Here is a discussion of the French Health Care system, which is very good.

I don’t believe many people here do say that. Nonetheless, there are many things about the Canadian system that are far better than ours.

To begin with, everyone in Canada has heath care coverage. 47 million Americans have no coverage, and that number is growing rather rapidly. Another 50 million or so are under covered. And insurance companies routinely deny coverage for necessary treatments because it’s much more profitable to just charge premiums and not pay for services than it is to cover necessary care. They cancel policies when people become seriously ill with something that will require long-term care. They enforce lifetime and annual caps on coverage. And they refuse to cover anyone with a “preexisting condition”. If you get sick, then lose your job, you now have a preexisting condition and can’t get coverage. 45,000 Americans die each year because they have no healthcare coverage.

We pay more per capita to cover a lesser percentage of our citizens than any other developed nation on earth. In 2006, we spent 15.3% of our Gross Domestic Product on healthcare. Canada covers all their citizens for just 10% of their GDP and covers 100%.

In healthcare outcomes, Canadians beat us hands down. They live longer than we do, have a far lower percentage of deaths from preventable cause, a lower infant mortality rate and lower death in childbirth rate than the US. In fact, in those metrics, we are #37 in the world, behind Costa Rica and just ahead of Slovenia. We are only number 1 in cost.

So perhaps there are a few good things we could adopt from studying the system of our neighbors to the north.

@marinelife @jaytkay Ok thank you but I am not intersted in France’s healthcare system I was simply stating back to @janbb that I had not heard of France before in reference to health care reform. Thank you though.

Whatever its failures, Canadian health care is demonstrably and measurably superior to ours, metric to metric, including cost per capita, infant mortality, excess death, excess morbidity and life expectancy. This is not a surprise however, since according to our own CIA, we rank 37th in the world in health care, just behind Cuba.

People must be allowed to cost money. Priority number one.

@dpworkin scary…I didn’t think I had it so good… I am one disability check from being homeless

I have many close ties in Canada and from Canada. I have yet to hear any of them wanting to replace their system with one like ours.

Since Canada is a confederacy, the central government has little control over its provinces. It does set major policies and universal health care is one of them. Each province administers its own program and bargains for drugs and supplies either as a province or in conjunction with other provinces.

Everyone in every country has some horror story about “someone they know” that was let down by their health system. Most of the stories amount to urban legions. I have directly asked Canadians and citizens of other countries their opinion of their health care, all were positive and not wanted to experience the U.S. system or lack thereof.

Seems like by what I heard from Canadians, they are happier. So yeah, let’s copy’em.

That’s certainly my impression too.

@dpworkin no America ranks way behind Cuba, Cuba has an awesome health care ethos, huge percentage of doctors per capita, a total and comprehensive health care system. Lacking in drugs and equipment though.

Cuba outranks the US in preventative medicine, but the outcomes aren’t quite as good because the emphasis there is not on high technology. It is, indeed an excellent system of entirely free neighborhood health care.

I for one never say I want to copy Canada’s healthcare set-up. It seems to me the people against single payer bring up Canada all of the time, not the people for it. I want doctors salaried doctors, Canada still bills fee for service from what I understand. I would rather have Canada’s system than ours in the US, but it is not that I idealize Canada’s system. I think there are better ways to give universal health care.

Pretty muc Canadians would rather have their system, they would never vote to get rid of it. My impression is their complaints are complaints that should be looked at and addressed to improve the system. Nothing is perfect, complaints do not mean dump the whole thing, it means there are still ways to improve. In America we have some pretty screwed up things about our healthcare system and insurance, and to try to say that ours is wonderful and the majority is satisfied is BS to me. I hate my current insurance, I think it discriminates against the sick, and those most likely to get sick.

@talljasperman said in another post that he quit working on his own. I am also disabled but thru working for years and arthritis. I am treated extremely well. However Canada’s doctors often do every expensive test under the sun on a 90 year old who is unconscious with multi organ failure so the costs of our health care is escalating.

@faye They do this in the U.S., too. Here, it’s often because of a fear of lawsuits. Is that the case in Canada as well?

@Dr_Dredd I am interested in @faye response to your question, but I am guessing it is to make money. The doctors bill for their services just like here in the states. Did you here about some case, not that there was a lawsuit, just a medical case, I heard of where the doctor did a PAP smear on a very elderly women who was in her last months of life? That doctor should be put in jail for rape in my opinion.

I’m not sure what disability has to do with it. That’s not health insurance, primarily. Most of it has to do with income. In any case, no one wants to be disabled in the US without private disability insurance, and even with it, it can be hell to get the benefits you paid for.

I know a number of people on disability. I hear about their issues with finding good doctors and getting their meds paid for, and finding a place to live that they can afford in a neighborhood where they won’t be killed when they step out the door. God forbid they should have epilepsy, too (which they do).

I don’t think Canada sues so much, I don’t know why they do this except that they can. The doctor of this 90 year old said she wanted to be able to tell the family what exactly he died of- saying being 90 was not enough. So many people I’ve come in contact with have denied death happens, instead of helping with dignity. So Partly it’s family telling the doctors to do something, anything. Our doctors don’t get paid for ordering tests but lab, x-ray, ct and ultrasound techs and MRI techs get paid- not to mention the cost of running the machines.