Too Costly For Too Little Care
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What to Know: Canada’s health care system is often mentioned as a desirable model for the U.S., so why are so many Canadians coming here for surgeries?
“Canadian Medicare, our northern neighbor’s universal health care system, generally receives rave reviews from proponents of nationalized or socialized health care, but the Fraser Institute found that more than 63,000 Canadians left their country to have surgery in 2016,” the Foundation for Economic Education reports. “As Americans contemplate overturning our health system in favor of one similar to Canada’s, we must ask why so many leave. The Canadian system consistently ranks low or lowest across numerous metrics in the Commonwealth Fund’s extensive survey on health care. With regards to specialists and surgeries, the United States ranked best or nearly best.”
The TPPF Take: The reality of single-payer health care systems is rationing.
“In single-payer systems, the government saves money not by more efficient administration, but by controlling both the budget and by limiting allowable treatments,” says TPPF’s David Balat. “In the U.S., we already have a single-payer health care system, called the Veterans Administration Hospital system. A 2015 internal audit of the VA reported, ‘307,000 veterans may have died waiting for care.’”
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