How Good is Canadian Health Care?

Summary

The purpose of this project was to update the existing publication “How Good is Canadian Health Care.” The article was revised to focus the debate on successful European and Asian health care systems. The researcher undertook a comparison of OECD countries with universal-access health care based on the structure and performance of their systems.

Grant Outputs

How Good is Canadian Healthcare? – http://www.cimca.ca/reports/How%20Good%20is%20Canadian%20Health%20Care%20(2004)%20Fraser%20Institute.pdf

This report examines Canada’s universal-access health care system vis-à-vis other systems in OECD countries. It shows that after adjusting for age, Canada spends more than any other OECD country on health care. While most other OECD countries require cost sharing for specialist visits, hospital visits, or primary care services, Canadians do not, though we do pay for pharmaceuticals. The report concludes that Canada is the only country in the industrialized world that outlaws parallel private health care. It suggests that the Canadian system is inferior to other systems, producing longer wait times, resulting in more deaths from preventable causes and costing more than other similar systems. The report recommends that alternative care, comprehensive care, private insurance, and private hospitals should be integrated into the existing system.