NY Times:
Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.But a Supreme Court ruling last June — it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists — appears to have become a turning point for the entire country.
“The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services,” the court ruled.
I’m curious what you would say to this, as a response:
“U.S. Life Span Shorter”
http://health.yahoo.com/news/178301
The conclusion of the AP article is that men and women in as many as 41 other countries in the world have higher average life expectancies than do those in the U.S., including many with far more socialized health care systems than ours, such as much of Europe. Interestingly, Canada is among those countries, with an average life span of more than 80 years for both men and women, according to the Canadian government, compared to 77.9 for the U.S.
There are a lot of factors that play into life expectancy, of course, and the quality and accessability of healthcare is only one of them (albeit a very significant one.) I certainly do not think that a system such as you have described in Canada where it is illegal to purchase private health care is the preferred solution, but I am curious how a completely free-market system might function in place of our existing system, and if some sort of fundamental universal healthcare option might be desired as a supplement to this system to provide the most basic treatments for those who cannot afford to purchase even the cheapest vendors’ services.
I live in Canada and was shocked to hear that despite the fact that 30% of healthcare in Canada is private, it is outlawed. I was even more shocked to discover that this illegal underground of private doctors PAYS TAXES. That the Canadian government allows these doctors to treat people even when they are breaking the law can easily be explained. THEY AREN’T. Private Care isn’t illegal, just less popular due to the fact you have to pay 11,000$ to be treated 2 weeks earlier.