Health care x2: Canada vs. USA

For my second blog on health care I thought I would discuss the differences in view of health care, and the different systems between the Canadian Health care system, and the American Health care system.

The Canadian Health care system is a universal health care system which is composed of many provincial systems and on federal system. The type of universal health care that Canada has is single-player health care. Single-player health care is a type of health care were there is only one pool, run by the government, in which there is a multitude of sellers and one buyer, the buyer being the state/ government. Canada's system makes it so that their federal government provides the funding for the provincial governments, which in turn manage hospitals and, for the most part, the funding. The whole system is considered "socialized insurance", not medicine, because the doctors are in the private sector and not directly funded by the government. In 1984 the Canadian government passed the Canada Health Act, this bill made it so that all "insured persons" were fully insured, and it also made it possible for private delivery/ insurance, because the ban of private health insurance was deemed unlawful.

The American Health care system is a mixture of both privatized health insurance and public health insurance. The American Health care system is largely owned by the private sector, while the public sector still plays a minor, compared to the private sector, role. The public sector of American health care includes programs like: Medicaid, Medicare, TRICARE, CHIP, and Veterans Health Administration. As for the efficiency it is debated on how good/ bad it its, but many think that the efficiency of our health care system is not so good because of the amount of uninsured, but also the amount of money the American government spends on health care in general, compared to other countries.

As for which is better or worse it is really up to the citizens of each country to decide. In the end I would go with the Canadian system because it seems to know exactly what it is doing and has a definite direction, while our system seems to be politically torn with no definite direction. Though I do think the Canadian system is better, I wouldn't say thot ours is so bad, but we can only hope for a greater, possibly better insured, future.