Recently, as the after dinner drinks were being served, talk turned to politics and then somehow segued onto health care. The American at the table who had brought up the subject stated flatly that he did not believe in socialized medicine and judged the US system superior. This got a rise from the Canadians present, but it was impossible to have a reasoned discussion. This was an American who, like so many others, has been told since childhood that anything produced by the world's greatest nation must be the best. That the World Health Organization ranks the US system 37th in the world did not faze him, he simply refused to accept it. Also, the Republican propaganda machine had done its work and he was convinced that doctors in Canada are government employees, among other delusions. I rolled my eyes, kept out of it and ordered another rum.
It is actually health insurance that is socialized in Canada, with doctors and hospitals operating as private businesses, much the same as in the US. And despite those line ups for elective surgery in Canada that have been so high publicized, waiting times for necessary procedures are actually shorter than in US hospitals. Canada's health care system is not perfect, but it provides a uniformly high standard of care for everyone in the country and does so for a far lower cost per person than the ludicrously expensive system in the United States requires to provide a highly variable quality of care to only those Americans who can afford it. The fundamental difference is that health care is considered a basic human right in the rest of the developed world and a commodity to be bought and sold like any other in the United States.
Some fifty thousand American families are driven into bankruptcy every year by medical bills. Forty-eight million people in the US have no access to health care and tens of millions more receive only the limited care for which their health management organization is willing to pay. As a result, many of the metrics for health care quality, like infant mortality, place the US on a par with third world countries. In addition, health insurance expenses have become a serious liability for American businesses and recently pushed General Motors to the verge of bankruptcy. In spite of all this, most Americans still unquestioningly believe that their health care system must rank among the world's best. Constructive change will only come when the cost of health care becomes a make or break issue for Corporate America and all of the politicians it finances in Congress and The White House are instructed to drop the disinformation campaign and design something better.
