Canada is only one of 27 countries with universal health care.
Yes, twenty-seven (27!) countries in the free world have universal health care. Here’s a list of countries that have universal health care:
Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Korea, New Zealand, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Czech, Republic, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, Finland, Slovak Republic, Spain, Hungary, Luxembourg.
Other nations have universal health care but I only listed the democratic free-market countries of the world—members of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or OECD.
Well at least Canada’s is the best in the world, right?
Wrong.
The World Health Organisation ranked Canada’s Health care system 30th best in the world in terms of efficiency in delivering health care to its citizens.
The best research available to date reports that Canada, while spending more on health care than any other universal-access, industrialized country in the OECD, ranks 14th in the percentage of total life expectancy that will be lived disability-free, ranks 16th in infant mortality and 12th in perinatal mortality, ranks 8th in mortality amenable to health care, ranks 9th in potential years of life lost due to disease, and ranks 6th in the incidence of breast cancer mortality.
Canada ranks first in only one of seven health care outcome categories and does not rank first in any of access to care, supply of technologies, or supply of physicians.
In a recent survey conducted by Harvard University for the Commonwealth Fund, Canadian respondents were more likely than any other universal-access country in the world to wait more than one month for non-emergency surgery. Some have to wait many months, and many have to wait years. Some give up entirely.
Changing Canada’s health system means “American Style Health Care”.
No, wrong. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that.)
Twenty-seven free nations have universal health care and all of them spend less money than Canada and provide better health care to their citizens in terms of health outcomes and timely availability of services. Only Canada outlaws a parallel private health care system. Again, Canada is the only nation that outlaws private alternatives.
As the study reports:
The comparative evidence is that the Canadian health care model is inferior to others in place in the OECD [which does not include the U.S. or Mexico since they are the only two without universal access]. It produces inferior access to physicians and technology, produces longer waiting times, is less successful in preventing death from preventable causes, and costs more than any of the other systems that have comparable objectives. The models that produce superior results and cost less than Canada’s monopolistic, single-insurer, single-provider system have user fees; alternative, comprehensive, private insurance; and private hospitals. Canada should follow the example of these superior health care models.
Clearly there are abundant alternatives. But Canada could look to nearly any free nation on earth to find that to get better health care, Canada has to invite private enterprise into the system and embrace what has actually proven to work. There is a heck of a lot Canada can learn from the U.S. but also from any of the 26 other countries in the OECD with universal access—all of whom are doing better than Canada. Change could well mean a “Norwegian-style health care system”—and that would be a vast improvement over Canada’s current system.
The left (Liberals; and the extreme left, the socialist NDP) want to fix health care.
Wrong.
Liberals (and of course the socialist NDP) like to rally Canadians to their anti-American cause by dismissing the very idea of changing Canada’s horrible health care system and “warning” Canadians that it would mean “American-Style Health Care”.
Just how it is that American-style health care is “bad” is difficult to comprehend inasmuch as Americans are about the healthiest, wealthiest people on earth, and America comes up with the vast majority of new life-saving drugs, surgical techniques, and technological equipment; their hospitals are modern and brimming with the best equipment; and Americans don’t have to wait for access like Canadians do. While it’s not perfect (there’s too many uninsured for example), in the U.S. neither liberal nor conservative governments (Democrats or Republicans) have changed their system to anything like Canada’s, as we know.
In fact, few in the world would look to Canada for answers—except on “what to avoid”. In the United States, people on both sides of the aisle warn of the dangers of a “Canadian-style health care system” because Americans want to remain healthy—economically and physically.
Canada’s left-wing hates America, and are playing that card hoping that Canadians will jump on their anti-American bandwagon. They think that being Liberal or being NDP means being Canadian, and that, in turn, means being anti-American. Well that’s stupid. And they’re playing Canadians for fools.
The left are actually in fear of allowing private citizens and companies to fix health care in Canada because it exposes them and their social-program agenda as the failure that it is.
If private citizens—private enterprise—were allowed to enter the system, they’d fix Canada’s monopolized, socialized health system as they’ve done in nearly every other country in the world. But then what use would there be for the Liberals and the NDP and their political philosophy which is entirely based on Canada’s current health care system and creating various other government social programs? Their very reason for being would be exposed as the sham that it is. So of course they desperately fight to maintain political control, saying whatever they think might sucker voters.
The left would have us believe that Canada’s health system is ideal the way it is, and yet somehow, apparently, Canada as a nation need to spend billions upon billions more taxpayer dollars to fix all this ideal-ness, as evidenced by recent Liberal election promises. This despite the fact that Canada already spends more than any other country with a universal system and achieves worse results. A Martian would think Canada were a nation of morons. Actually I don’t doubt that many Earthlings believe that too.
Simply to accomplish the left’s political ideological end-game, Canada is the only country in the free world that bans (outlaws!) private alternatives to the 100% government monopolistic system. Canada is the only country that doesn’t allow, by law, private citizens to spend their own money on their own basic health care as they see fit. And all Canadians pay the price for this in terms of inferior health care. Inferior health! Canadians are not getting the best that life has to offer.
That’s the cost of voting Liberal or NDP.
There are two other countries that do the same as Canada in banning private alternatives—it’s just that they aren’t members of OECD so I didn’t mention them before. The two other countries are: Cuba and North Korea.
The Liberals and NDP are promoting Cuban-style health care. Or North Korean-style health care.
Conservatives aren’t. That’s another reason I’m a conservative.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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