Re: Conservative Editor Diane Francis Says Canada's System Superior To The USA's.
Jerry Okamura
not support someone else paying for your healthacre needs. If you don't
like to be dependent on someone else, you would not want the government to
be paying for your healthcare needs. If you really want to solve the cost
problem with healthcare, you would come up with a way to solve the main
reason you have a healthcare cost problem, and that is medical inflation.
Medical inflation is the real enemy, and Canada is no exception.
"Crap Detector" <cice...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.25876928d...@news.aioe.org...
>
>
> As the health care establishment appears to be once again able to block
> any
> reasonable changes to America's sick health care system, it's important to
> note that, ironically, the "father" of Canada's universal, single-payer
> health
> care system was late President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1964, his plan caused
> Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson to rush the same health care scheme
> into existence so that Ottawa was not beaten by the Americans, as was the
> case
> in 1934 with Social Security. As things turned out, LBJ compromised with
> the
> Republicans and scaled back his plan to a co-payer insurance for senior
> citizens, or Medicare. So it's hardly surprising that, again, a popular
> President cannot win out against the nasty tactics and enormous wealth of
> the
> medical vested interests.
>
> And yet, today Canada's system is not only as good as America's, but
> better
> medically speaking, according to the World Health Organization. Even more
> dramatic, it is between 30 and 60% cheaper for procedures, medications and
> hospital stays. Despite compelling evidence, the status quo remains south
> of
> the border and American voters/media appear to be unaware of the need for
> change. There are billions in profits being made at the expense of
> Americans
> and the country's economy.
>
> The Canadian Advantage: Five Reasons
>
> 1. Doctors' fees. According to health data collected by the Organization
> for
> Economic Cooperation and Development, the average income for physicians in
> the
> United States in 1996 was nearly twice that for physicians in Canada.
> (Doctors
> in Canada are self-employed, bill provinces for fees and are not employees
> of
> the governments.)
>
> 2. Hospitals are not-for-profit entities in Canada run on behalf of
> patients
> and governed by regional health boards that include physicians and other
> health professionals.
>
> 3. Drugs are cheaper in Canada. In the U.S., US$728 per capita is spent
> each
> year on drugs, while in Canada it is $509. Patented drug prices in Canada
> are
> between 35% and 45% lower than in the United States, according to the
> OECD.
> (The price differential for brand-name drugs between the two countries has
> led
> Americans to purchase upward of US$1 billion in drugs per year from
> Canadian
> pharmacies.)
>
> This is because Canadian provinces buy drugs through a centralized system
> and
> get volume discounts. U.S. laws prohibit Medicare and Medicaid from doing
> so.
> The Canadian Patented Medicine Prices Review Board also can set a fair and
> reasonable price on patented products, based on comparisons with similar
> drugs
> and prices in similar countries. (Both countries are net importers of
> medications and industries in both spend 0.1% on research each year.)
>
> 4. Administrative costs are dramatically lower in Canada than in the U.S.
> Administrative costs in the U.S. are double Canada's (according to a study
> in
> the New England Journal of Medicine 2003) plus healthcare providers and
> insurance companies have huge marketing costs.
>
> Here's the study done by the Department of Medicine, Cambridge Hospital
> and
> Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass, USA:
>
> In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least US$294.3 billion
> in
> the United States, or US$1,059 per capita, as compared with US$307 per
> capita
> in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of
> health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health
> care
> expenditures in Canada.
>
> Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent;
> the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the
> United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent).
>
> Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada. Between 1969
> and
> 1999, the share of the U.S. health care labor force accounted for by
> administrative workers grew from 18.2 percent to 27.3 percent. In Canada,
> it
> grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996.
> (Both nations' figures exclude insurance-industry personnel.)
>
> CONCLUSIONS: The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care
> administration has grown to 752 dollars per capita. A large sum might be
> saved
> in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by
> implementing
> a Canadian-style health care system.
>
> 5. Other costs also add to American health care expenditures dramatically:
> government administrative red tape, requirements for record-keeping, a
> diversity of accounts receivable insurers and a patchwork quilt of plans
> and
> layers of authority to deal with.
>
> Higher payment for doctors has created a brain drain of physicians from
> Canada
> to the U.S. but in 2005 this reversed, according to the Canadian Institute
> for
> Health Information (CIHI).
>
> Today, unsurprisingly, a medical tourism business in Canada is growing
> rapidly
> as Americans go north to take advantage of lower costs. Now that the
> Americans
> appear to have blown another chance to fix their health care system, it's
> time
> for Canadian physicians and others to ratchet up the industry offering
> selective services to Americans.
>
> Diane Francis blogs at National Post.
>
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/lbj-created-canadas-super_b_
> 263259.html
>
>