On Canada’s Health-Care System

Yet no political party in Canada proposes fundamentally changing Medicare.

Canadians may not be entirely happy with their system, but they certainly do not want an American for-profit system.

well i dnt think ur a very nice person

p.s degrassi ROCKS!!!!!!

My family was in Canada visiting several years ago. At a castle, I was chatting with the woman in front of us in line. She was an American who'd met a Canadian, fallen in love and stayed. The one thing I remember is her comment about how insane taxes are in Canada -- and that health care there was problematic. It wasn't a long conversation -- but she clearly favored an American approach to both taxes and health care!

And I keep thinking that in this whole discussion, about how best to meet patients' needs, that one of the things missing completely is the benefits of personal medicine, in which patients actually receive personal attention. Dr. Norman Makous (doctor for some 50-60 years) has written a book talking about just that, called "Time to Care." It's not about the current legislation, but about the changes that have happened in the care of patients and how that should be fixed. And the legislation fails to address the key issues in the book -- HOW we provide medical services! His point of view is that having an independent primary care physician at the heart of the person's medical care is a proven, effective and ethical method of monitoring care -- and it reduces unnecessary and expensive tests that so drive up costs. Very thought-provoking -- and the kind of medicine I want.

With regard to the first paragraph of your snippet, maybe the same is true for the French and their health-care system...

Speaking as a Canadian, I can say that dealing with healthcare is frustrating here. While we may do well in many areas, the fact that there is a single supplier leaves a lack of incentive for efficiency and innovation that we could be enjoying.
But we also have to point south as a source of the problem. As past econtalk episodes have shown the American health care system, due to government interference, increases the costs due to false incentives, fixed pricing (for medicare) etc. This allows canadian healthcare defenders to say "See? Free Market Healthcare is expensive and leaves poor people unable to afford even basic healthcare."
Canada's system is unique in that it is ILLEGAL to charge the patient for anything that is covered by the government system. Most european countries (even Britain and France) have private doctors, hospitals, insurance etc that can charge the patient and 'compete' with the public option. In doing so, they retain doctors and professionals in their country. I can hardly see this as a bad thing.

Ms. Adamson is correct in saying that some people jump the line as far as medical care is concerned. Recently some Canadian based NHL teams receiveced H1N1 shots and given priority over other citizens. "Crony Crapitalism" I suppose.

Of course the affluent will always have access. If they can't get it in their country they go elsewhere. Why not? Why should someone die in line, when you have a wife, let us say, who can be treated in a timely manner in another country? As JFK said: "Life is not fair".
Private and public intermixing would would be the ideal way.

My experience in a socialized system is that the ONLY way to get real medical care when one is very sick is through professional and personal connections. Frankly, I don't think too many Americans don't understand this.

As Munger and Roberts might say, if you hold prices constant you just shift the allocator to other margins (or something like that). In this case, political connections. Suddenly, even bit players that have any say in the queue find their stock value has increased and others become attracted to such positions for that very reason.