Curing Canada's chronic ills - features

Curing Canada's chronic ills - features:

"Advocates of the public system, such as McBane, insist that universal health care is one of the strongest manifestations of Canadian values and identity. 'We don't think we can survive with rugged individualism alone. We believe that we need community, especially to take care of sickness. The sick shouldn't be alone to take care of themselves,' he says. 'That's how we've organized a lot of social policy. Around collective approaches to problems, not survival of the fittest-which is very American.'

"Day, however, insists that even adament supporters of private care do not aspire to everntually 'adopt an American-style health system.'

"Despite prevailing anti-American sentiments, Professor Soderstrom maintains that the best way to analyze the likely effects of a private provision on the performance of health care in Canada is to look at the American experience for guidance.

" 'There is a large amount of literature out there that looks at the likely effects of private provision on the performance of the health care services. If you look at the preponderance of evidence, it suggests that the full profit provision does not improve quality of care, does not improve productivity and it's not at all clear that it improves access,' he says. 'There is even literature that looks at private clinics and says if you look at the quality of care, the private clinics have it much worse than public clinics. Unfortunately, [Canada] is not yet marked by this debate.'"

Clearly there are caveats in this piece for America as we adopt a single payer system.

Sphere: Related Content