Privatizing health care is not the answer: lessons from the United States
By Marcia Angell, MD
Canadian Medical Association
CMAJ
October 21, 2008
There are strong moves within Canada to make the Canadian health care system more like the US system by partially privatizing it. Those who favour this approach claim that the US system offers more choice and better quality of care and spares the public purse. Some proponents even go so far as to claim that it is more efficient. My purpose here is to disabuse Canadians of these myths by taking a close look at how the US system works and comparing it with the Canadian system.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/179/9/916?etoc
PDF version:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/179/9/916
Those who are well informed on health policy are quite aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the health care financing systems in both the United States and Canada. Although the greater effectiveness and efficiency of the Canadian single payer system are well understood by supporters of a national health program in the United States, there has been a reluctance to use the positive features of the Canadian experience as an example of what we could achieve here. Why? Inevitably, bringing up Canada results in challenges that are a distraction from the primary message on reform.
The opponents of reform in the United States, along with their reactionary Canadian colleagues, are driven by ideology. They will not allow health policy science to interfere with their anti-government message. They do not seek the truth. Instead, they craft messages that paint a terribly inaccurate picture of the Canadian health care system. Sometimes their messages are based on exceptions or on minutia that may represent real problems, but then they present those facts as if they taint the entire health care system with rot. Other times, they simply do not tell the truth. You can cite several examples of lies that have been told so often about the Canadian system that they have been accepted as the truth here in the United States.
This is why Marcia Angell’s article is so important. She presents a broad overview of the two systems, explaining why the U.S. system is so expensive yet ineffective when compared to the Canadian system. She does address some of the failings in Canada, but also explains why the Canadian financing system is better equipped to address those problems than is the dysfunctional, fragmented U.S. financing system.
This article should be downloaded so that it can be used to help inform those who have been misled by the intense anti-government propaganda campaign of the opponents of single payer reform.