Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Canadian Health Care System

The costs would certainly be closer. There are still other efficiencies that come with universality, plus the provincial governments seem to have pretty significant clout when negotiating drug prices as well.

The one thing our health care system hasn't figured out yet is how to let people pay extra for even better service while feeding that extra money back into the general system, ie without splitting into a public/private system.

Overall, though, I have been *very* impressed with our health care system. With a few exceptions, it seems to be "cheap in the right places" but spends money where it's needed. It makes effective use of (generally small) private companies where they make sense but doesn't dump big expensive operations like hospitals into the for-profit sector.

I do believe that having a universal health care system (implemented properly) can be quite a bit more efficient than the multiple levels of administration you need for a more complex system where employers and HMOs have to be in the loop as well. Some of the proposals being bandied around in the US do *not* seem to be real well conceived -- forcing universality onto the cyrrent private system is missing part of the point -- that the simplification resulting from universality can result in improved efficiency, not just "covering everyone".

I'm in Ontario, btw.