Canadian Health Care Reform

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I. Introduction A widely used device in the current debate on healthcare reform in the U.S. has been to compare healthcare delivery in the U.S. with Canada’s national health care system. While Americans generally dislike looking at foreign institutions as models for internal reform, the neighboring proximity of Canada and the similarities in values, economic institutions and viewpoints between the two countries makes Canada seem less remote. This is why the comparison is so interesting. Despite the fact that the two countries are similar in heritage in that they have the same language and a similar culture, they share a border and have similar economic institutions—their health care systems have developed so differently. The purpose of this …show more content…

The system is known as Medicare, which should not be confused with the Medicare program for the elderly in the United States. General taxes finance NHI through a single payer system, consumer co payments are insignificant and the physician’s choice is unlimited (Ridic, 2012). This health care system can be traced back to the 1940s when some provinces in Canada introduced compulsory health insurance. It took on its current form however, when the province of Saskatchewan set up a hospitalization plan immediately after World War II. During this time, the rural and low-income province was overwhelmed by shortages of both hospital beds and medical practitioners. The main feature of this plan was the creation of the regional system of hospitals; local hospitals for primary care, district hospitals for complex cases, and base hospitals for the most difficult cases. In 1956, the federal parliament enacted the Hospital and Diagnostic Services Act laying the basis for a nationwide system of hospital insurance (Ridic, 2012). By 1961, all 10 provinces and the two territories had hospital insurance plans of their own with the federal government paying half of the costs. Ten years later, Canada had a national health insurance plan, providing coverage for both hospitalization and physician services. By this time both the U.S. and Canada were spending approximately 7.5% of their GDP on health care (Ridic, 2012). After the 70s however, they moved in different

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