Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Canada’s health care system has prominent features that distinguish it from virtually all other high-income countries that provide universal health care coverage.  One such feature is the absence of private insurance markets for medically necessary services. The Canada Health Act, along with the potential loss of federal government funding if the Act is violated, has resulted in provincial governments either prohibiting or severely discouraging health care providers from treating patients under both public and private insurance schemes. Providers are also prohibited or discouraged from operating completely outside of the public insurance scheme. Consequently, there is little legal scope or economic opportunity for suppliers of private insurance to operate in Canada, either by offering insurance coverage that replicates coverage under the public scheme or by supplementing coverage under the government insurance scheme. Conversely, in most high-income count...

Comparing the performance of different countries’ health-care systems provides an opportunity for policy makers and the general public to determine how well Canada’s health-care system is performing relative to its international peers. Overall, the data examined suggest that, although Canada’s is among the most expensive universal-access health-care systems in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), its performance is modest to poor. This study uses a “ value for money approach ” to compare the cost and performance of 28 universal health-care systems in high-income countries. The level of health-care expenditure is measured using two indicators, while the performance of each country’s health-care system is measured using 40 indicators, representing the four broad categories: availability of resources use of resources access to resources quality and clinical performance. Five measures of the overa...