When John McCain talks about healthcare on the campaign trail, he often
challenges people who point to Canada’s universal healthcare system as
preferable to the U.S. system to “ask the Canadians how much they like
it.”
That’s a fair challenge.
After all, we all know of Canadians who cross the border to get a procedure or a test – just like the U.S. citizens who cross the border to get pharmaceuticals at controlled prices.
This sounded like an occasion for some serious primary research into the public impact of universal health care, preferably over a mug of Dark266 at Cameron’s Brewery in Oakville, Ontario (“Beer brewed by a connoisseur, instead of an accountant”). I was already looking up tickets on Kayak.com when, unfortunately, I remembered that someone had already asked the Canadians, and I already have the answers right here.
According to the Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey released in July, 14% of Canadians believe that their system should be rebuilt completely. Looks pretty damning until you look at the next line over – 33% of people in the U.S. have that thought about our system, more than twice the proportion. If you ask the physicians, only 3% of Canadian docs think that the system needs to be rebuilt completely, as opposed to 16% of U.S. docs, more than five times the proportion. Despite their problems and complaints, Canadians like their system far better than U.S. citizens like theirs.
Oh, and there is this detail: in 2004, the CBC conducted an elaborate two stage poll via phone, email, web site, and postal letters, to determine who Canadians believed to be “the greatest Canadian of all time.” The winner? Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan Premier who led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public healthcare to Canada.
So I guess they kind of like it.
We have seen that the private healthcare does not work well and the government run healthcare system has also failed in many countries that tried it. Private health insurance companies are unfair to sick people – sometimes people get disqualified because they have one of the million sicknesses listed in the pre-approval applications and those companies try to give insurance to healthier individuals because healthy individual = less doctor visits, less medications and less drug coverage = more profits for private health industry.
I think what we need is cooperation between government and private insurance companies. I do not believe it is right to list million health preconditions as a qualification test for applicants and deny them healthcare. This is unfair and barbaric! Can you believe in 20th century America we can disqualify an American citizen from healthcare coverage because 5 years ago they had an emergency doctors visit? That’s where the government should step in and redefine all rules for private healthcare companies. These companies should not be able to easily disqualify families for coverage and if they want to stay in the game they have to actively work with the people, not just push them away.
So the problem is obvious: get rid of health industry lobbyists and drug company lobbyists and start listening to the people, it’s time to start addressing the average people’s needs. Until the lobbyists will have money, power and say, we will have this problem follow us in future as a shadow from dark past.
The 3% of happy Canadian doctors are the ones who stay. The 16% of the US doctors who think their northern neighbor’s socialized system stinks either 1.) left it themselves long ago, or 2.) have known too many peers who have, or 3.) have been frustrated enough with the overwhelming defensive practices forced upon them here to have taken a serious look into Canada’s system and balked at the move, or 4.) are foreign citizens who came to america to train and practice after careful consideration or the other choices- including Canada’s.