Canada, eh?

I think that Shona makes a valid point when stressing the fact that the Canadian health care system, and any national health service for that matter, is not free. These systems are paid for by the citizens of the country through taxation. In that sense, even though it is a government run system versus private, the tax payer should certainly retain the opportunity to act as a consumer and demand services in a timely fashion.

When diving into the Canadian health care system a bit deeper, it seems that about 30% is privately funded. This mostly goes to expenses not paid for by Medicare, like prescription drugs, dentistry, and optometry. The remaining 70% of health care is publicly financed, yet provisions are private. More and more, services are not being covered publicly and citizens are being forced to pay out of pocket or with secondary insurance. Oddly enough, the Canadian Health Act of 1984 does not explicitly ban private insurance for publicly insured services, but it provides financial incentives to discourage people from acquiring it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act). This would be acceptable if the publicly insured services, especially those of an urgent nature, were delivered expeditiously. Instead, Canadians are forced to endure long waiting times for not only screening procedures but, in Shona’s case, life-saving surgeries. While Canadians enjoy low out of pocket expenditures, this doesn’t matter much if they aren’t around to enjoy them.

The US lies on the opposite end of the spectrum with regards to health care consumerism. The largely private system encourages Americans to demand services to the extreme. This demand of access and excellence most certainly lends to the litigious nature of our health system. Problems arise when we have unrealistic expectations of health care providers and do not understand their limitations. Costs continue to spiral out of control as clinicians are forced to adopt astronomical insurance policies.

It seems then, that Canada and the US fall on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the notion of consumerism in health care. When thinking about the faults on each end, it is clear that the best case scenario will be a more moderate move to the middle.