Canada’s Healthcare Myth
The Best Health-Care System? the Numbers Say Otherwise - the Globe and Mail
One of the most comforting, yet debilitating, mythologies in Canada holds that we have the best health-care system in the world, or at least among the best.
Canadians desperately want to believe this assertion; hence its mythological status. Politicians have repeated the myth endlessly. The Romanow commission a decade ago stated, “Canada’s health system compares well with those of other wealthy industrialized countries.” Would that it were true then, or now.
A host of studies shows the Canadian health-care system middle-of-the-pack at best, except for cost (private and public), where it ranks near the top. The studies use different methodologies and weigh factors differently. No single one is determinant, but most point in the same direction: The myth about Canadian medicare is just that, a myth.
Now here comes the latest study: from the U.S.-based Commonwealth Fund, reported in the journal Health Affairs in the form of a survey of general practice physicians in 10 wealthy countries, including 2,124 doctors in Canada. The comparative results for Canada are dispiriting, and it can’t be because Canadian doctors are sourpusses. Over 80 per cent of them reported satisfaction at practising medicine.
The results show, not surprisingly for those familiar with other international comparisons, how far behind Canadian medicare is in the modern age.
Here are a few examples from the 10-country survey.