Canadian Health Care

I hear all the time from people how the Canadian health care system does not do as good of a job as the US system. "You have to wait for procedures in Canada" is the usual trope. Well, here's the data. Overall, the outcomes are better in Canada. The US system, for the money, basically sucks. And as one of the comments points out, huge swaths of Americans are not covered at all. It's a no-brainer, which is probably why we're stuck with the non-system we have.

Yet, of the 38 studies examined, 14 showed clear advantaged for Canadian patients, five suggested US care was superior, and the remainder were mixed. The studies showing the Canadian systems superiority found effects both on income -- low-income Americans with breast or prostate cancer do much worse than low-income Canadians with the same conditions -- and care effectiveness. For conditions like kidney failure or cystic fibrosis, Canadian care was simply better. You can pick through the tables with all the results here.

It's not that the data shows unbelievable advantages for Canada, to be sure. As the authors conclude, "although Canadian outcomes were more often superior to US outcomes than the reverse, neither the United States nor Canada can claim hegemony in terms of quality of medical care and the resultant patient-important outcomes." The question raised is slightly different: How can we possibly countenance a system that costs twice as much as the Canadian system but delivers slightly worse care? Even assuming diminishing returns, our expenditures should result in care outcomes at least 20% or 30% better than Canada's. Instead, they're about 5% worse, but cost around 187%. Does it sound like we're getting a good deal?