The Myth Adventures Of Myth Understandings
Debunking Canadian health care myths
By Rhonda Hackett
As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.
Often I’ll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner’s nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one’s merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everybody is covered.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage.
Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it.While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don’t get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.
Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only.
It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits.
My brother lives in Canada, and his wife was diagnosed with cancer late last year. From that time until she died in April this year, they did not have to pay a single penny for the costs involved in her treatment: X-rays, MRIs, chemotherapy, radiation, medication, a special bed at home, multiple (per day) home visits by nurses and other carers, home visits by doctors, emergency supplies (needles & morphine for when the pain inevitably became worse), and finally hospice care.
NOT A SINGLE PENNY.
No endless forms to fill in, no flood of bills, just peace of mind knowing that all that could be done was being done, and that they did not have the additional burden of wondering how they were going to pay for all of this.
On the other hand, I had a routine colonoscopy here in the US last October, and today, eight months later, I am *still* receiving bills from the multitude of people who were apparently involved in this minor, everyday procedure.
Similar stories to that of my sister-in-law exist in all the other countries where health care is provided to all. The US is not just a glaring exception, it is a flood light, or rather a supernova pointing out how *not* to care for its citizens. It simply astonishes me that there is still a sizable number of people who are against universal health care, and it is a most eloquent example of the power of brainwashing.
Quote: “However, I hear of NO Americans going north of the border to get medical care while I do hear of Canadians coming south to get medical care.”
That is another myth. Years ago Ontario (that is a province in Canada for the geogrphically challenged) had a huge problem with Americans with fake ID coming to Canada for treatment as they couldn’t affort it here. It cost the province millions to completely revamp the ID Cards. If they hadn’t, the border crossings would be inundated with the patients from the superior US Healthcare system.