Where I live the conventional wisdom is Canada has better healthcare because it’s more affordable. However I recently spoke to someone who worked in both Canadian and US hospitals and she said US had had more technology and more of a desire to stay competitive and welcome new patients. In both Canada and the US there is health insurance some employers offer so it’s not free in either country.
In: 0
Being better and being more affordable are two different characteristics that are only loosly connected. The top notch healthcare in the USA is mostly better than the same service elsewhere. HRHS treatment for example at the best childrens hospital in the US can run up a 7 digit price tag where as where I live it’s 5 digits and compleatly covered by insurance. But if only a tiny percentage of the country can afford it, it doesn’t really help the overall health of the population.
That is where affordabilty matters. Countries with a public system usually regulate how much companies can charge for a service or product, which means it becomes more accesable. But also means you don’t get the top notch treatment or your wait times might be longer.
US thinks they have it better as huge profits in providers pockets allow to hire more professional doctors and buy better medical tech. What they don’t understand is that it is not better if majority of nation can’t access that best tech. Is it better that minority of a nation accesses best medical aid in the world or that almost the whole nation has access to acceptable and good medical aid? Only fraction of cases require best of the best to operate your brain or heart and in most cases majority of medical experts are good enough to operate and a nation benefits if healthcare is included in tax and has access to not best, but good enough medical aid.
Also, it’s baseless argument to criticise national medical system funded by taxes. If we say that for example in Europe medical aid is “free”, we mean that we don’t need to save and have liquid funds to go to the hospital as we are taxed anyway and we are thankful, that small portion of the tax pool is used to fund healtcare.
Its all well and good being competitive but what does it matter if those worst off in society can’t acces care?
Also, canada has free healthcare as well as private healthcare you can get through employers. This is not uncommon in countries with universal.
Canada probably not the best example of healthcare though given that their solution for a lot of disabled people is to convince them to have euthanasia.
USA has some of the top doctors and medical scientists working to create breakthrough drugs and medicine, like Stem cell transplant to cure leukemia. But if you want something as simple as a CT scan, in Japan that costs 70 dollars where in the US it would be well over 1000. Don’t get me started on insulin.
Having breakthrough cutting edge medicine and medical technology != affordable basic routine medicine and medical procedures that is crucial to the populace as a whole.
Canada is free. However some of the provinces have been having crises with their healthcare systems leading to very long waiting times. Thus some people their turn to the private sector in order to get care quicker.
> more of a desire to stay competitive
I think that’s a key point between the US and other countries.
**Consider the DMV** (department of motor vehicles). I bet Canada has something similar. You need a driver’s license, so you go to the local DMV office. You fill out paperwork. You take a test. If you need to renew your license or do something else related to that, you go to the DMV.
Okay so far?
What if you didn’t like the way the DMV works. What if they were always slow, always made mistakes, and weren’t friendly when you went there.
What if you get to a point where you said, “Screw this DMV, I’m going to go get my license elsewhere”.
There IS nowhere else to get your license. You can go to the DMV, or you can just not get a license.
Since there’s only ONE provider for this service, the DMV knows you’re going to have to come there. The DMV isn’t worried about a competitor doing better, the DMV isn’t worried about “losing customers” to another service. Right?
So if they’re not worried about “losing business” or “losing customers”, why would they try to do better? Why innovate, why go above and beyond, why exceed expectations, why try to encourage people to use your service … when there’s no one you compete with?
That’s one issue that some people have with universal healthcare. You can either use the government’s healthcare system, or you can just suffer. You have no other option.
Yes, private insurance exists, but I just wanted to illustrate the point. There’s no incentive to stay competitive, in pricing, in service quality, in any aspect … if you have no competition.
This is something that universal healthcare has to find a way to overcome. I hope it can be done. But some people are going to find this a drawback that cannot be overcome.
Health care in Canada is free. The additional insurance you’ll see people talking about is typically extended insurance for eye, dental, mental health care, etc.
Canada’s health care funding is determined by federal and provincial government budgets. American health care funding is determined by insurance companies and hospital administrators.
The single, core benefit of the Canadian system is that nobody in Canada goes bankrupt over a broken arm or cancer treatment.
In most other categories, the American system offers a higher standard of care, but it comes at a (literal) price that a lot of people simply cannot afford.
Latest Answers