An inconvenient truth for GOP: Canada's system is better...

[Ben]

An inconvenient truth for the GOP: Canada's system is better

Republicans want to ensure no public option creeps into the American system

Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont
From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Sep. 14, 2009

It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.

Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.

But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.

Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.

But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.

The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.

Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.

One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.

So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.

To their credit, by putting public insurance on the table as a supplement to private plans, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to drag the United States into the club of civilized nations when it comes to health care. We've been in that club since the establishment of medicare more than 40 years ago.

Don't get us wrong here. We are not saying medicare is perfect; it is far from that, and it requires constant improvement, as most Canadians understand. But it is not a bad deal for citizens of this country.

The Republican-led anti-medicare lobby in Congress knows these numbers and facts. But they are regarded as inconvenient truths that must be ignored in the crusade to discredit the Canadian approach to health insurance, to ensure no public option creeps into the U.S. system. Anti-government ideology is running amok in Washington, trumping facts and rational debate, distorting one of the most important public policy issues the United States has grappled with in decades.

Ultimately, the U.S. public will pay the price for that.

Eugene Lang is a former senior economist at Finance Canada. Philip DeMont served as a senior policy adviser to Ontario's health minister.

[BellaBellucci]

Why are we even talking about health care here? If any of the potential plans covered SRS I'd be a happy camper, otherwise I feel like it's just reshuffling the same deck of old, torn up cards.

My only question is whether a public option would require everyone to carry insurance under penalty of law. That's a line for me.

~BB~

[Silcc69]

Do we need another thread when we have plenty in here.

[Silcc69]

double

[Helvis2012]

Why are we even talking about health care here? If any of the potential plans covered SRS I'd be a happy camper, otherwise I feel like it's just reshuffling the same deck of old, torn up cards.

My only question is whether a public option would require everyone to carry insurance under penalty of law. That's a line for me.

~BB~



No, there is no penalty and everyone is not required......but hey, the Democrats are pussy-ing out of another fight once again. Keep watching.....there will be no public option.

Total bullshit.

[notdrunk]

No, there is no penalty and everyone is not required......but hey, the Democrats are pussy-ing out of another fight once again. Keep watching.....there will be no public option.

Total bullshit.

Both bills contain some sort of penalty for businesses and individuals. An individual will have to claim "hardship" to be exempt from the penalty. One of the worries is that some businesses will force their workers to get on the public option by accepting the penalty.

[Helvis2012]

No, there is no penalty and everyone is not required......but hey, the Democrats are pussy-ing out of another fight once again. Keep watching.....there will be no public option.

Total bullshit.

Both bills contain some sort of penalty for businesses and individuals. An individual will have to claim "hardship" to be exempt from the penalty. One of the worries is that some businesses will force their workers to get on the public option by accepting the penalty.


Stop watching Fox.....you don't know what you're talking about.
:jerkoff

[notdrunk]

Stop watching Fox.....you don't know what you're talking about.
:jerkoff

http://www.pennlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-9/1252964765154200.xml&storylist=health&thispage=1

House Bill:



REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Individuals must have insurance, enforced through tax penalty with hardship waivers. The penalty is 2.5 percent of income.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Employers must provide insurance to their employees or pay a penalty of 8 percent of payroll. Companies with payroll under $250,000 annually are exempt, although fiscally conservative Democrats have pushed for that level to rise to $500,000.

Senate Bill:



REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Individuals will have to have insurance, enforced through tax penalties with hardship waivers.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Employers who don't offer coverage will pay a penalty of $750 a year for each full-time worker. Businesses with 25 or fewer workers are exempt.

Max Baucus' Bill:



REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Everyone must get coverage through an employer, on their own or through a government plan.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Not required to offer coverage, but companies with more than 50 full-time workers would pay a fee if the government ends up subsidizing employees' coverage.

Obama's Plan:



REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Unlike his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama did not propose an "individual mandate" during the campaign; instead he would have required all children to be insured, making it the parents' responsibility. He now supports an individual mandate as long as hardship waivers are provided.

REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Businesses with more than 50 workers would be required to offer their workers coverage or pay a fee.

All of them talk about some sort of penalty. You have no idea what you are talking about.

[Silcc69]

PWNED!

[Helvis2012]

PWNED!



Not quite....dumb dumb.

[slip969]

PWNED!



Not quite....dumb dumb.


Your the only one here that is the dumb dumb IMO. I'm very able to take care of myself and particularly do not need more legislation passed telling me how, where, why and when to do it.

[Justawannabe]

slip -

I don't think the argument for having to have insurance is telling you how, where or why, I think it is about making sure the things that will have to get paid for are paid for will be.

Same argument that was made for universal car insurance. If you injure someone with your car, it was wrong for you to be able to get out of paying for the injuries you caused. If you bet you won't get in a car accident but do, and you don't have health insurance the state and the hospitals eats the bill for your injuries, as the hospital shouldn't throw you out in the street for lack of pay.

Seems a reasonable argument to me for a financially responsible society.

[duplicatt]

Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.

Life expectancy is problematic because people die in ways and in places that the health care system cannot do anything about.

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/09/natural-life-expectancy-in-united.html

"...once fatal injuries are taken into account, U.S. "natural" life
expectancy from birth ranks first among the richest nations of the
world."

http://www.aei.org/docLib/20061017_OhsfeldtSchneiderPresentation.pdf

As for infant mortality....

http://www.reason.com/news/show/127038.html

"A 2007 study done by Baruch College economists June and David O"Neill
sheds some light on why U.S. infant mortality rates are higher—more low
weight births. In their study, U.S. infant mortality was 6.8 per 1,000
live births, and Canada's was 5.3. Low birth weight significantly
increases an infant's chance of dying. Teen mothers are much more likely
to bear low birth weight babies and teen motherhood is almost three
times higher in the U.S. than it is in Canada. The authors calculate
that if Canada had the same the distribution of low-weight births as the
U.S., its infant mortality rate would rise above the U.S. rate of 6.8
per 1,000 live births to 7.06. On the other hand, if the U.S. had
Canada's distribution of low-weight births, its infant mortality rate
would fall to 5.4."

[SarahG]

An inconvenient truth for the GOP: Canada's system is better


..unless you're trans, and have to go to the Clarke Institute because of where you live in Canada.

[SarahG]

Why are we even talking about health care here? If any of the potential plans covered SRS I'd be a happy camper, otherwise I feel like it's just reshuffling the same deck of old, torn up cards.

My only question is whether a public option would require everyone to carry insurance under penalty of law. That's a line for me.

~BB~

Getting HRT, let alone SRS from a lot of these NHS-style programs is like trying to get blood from a stone...

Wait time in some parts of the UK to get onto HRT can be as much as 6 years.

You could go private, like most people in the US do. But its harder to save up for SRS/FFS and so forth when you're being taxed to pay for an NHS system that refuses to properly treat you.

[duplicatt]

Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.

One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.

First off, this is rather disingenuous. They claim there are over 40 million Americans without health insurance. Then they claim that Canadian citizens are all covered. Unfortunately for their version of logic, fully a third of that figure of uninsured 'Americans' are illegal aliens and aliens are not covered by Canadian Medicare. I read an interesting story recently about a British tourist (accompanied by Jeremy Clarkson, no less) who had to come up with the money to have his son treated in a Quebec hospital before treatment could start.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6814702.ece

It is very dishonest for Lang and DeMont to count aliens against the US and exclude them when it comes to Canada.

Another large chunk of that number of uninsured Americans are people who can afford insurance (I'm talking about people who make somewhere above $50K a year) and simply do not buy any. Still another large chunk of those without coverage are the people who would qualify for Medicaid - if they'd simply apply.

[Helvis2012]

PWNED!



Not quite....dumb dumb.


Your the only one here that is the dumb dumb IMO. I'm very able to take care of myself and particularly do not need more legislation passed telling me how, where, why and when to do it.


That's quite an argument......loser. Do all your right wing buddies know you're a faaag?

[Silcc69]

Why do people must resort to name calling

[TommyFoxtrot]

An inconvenient truth for the GOP: Canada's system is better

Republicans want to ensure no public option creeps into the American system

Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont
From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Sep. 14, 2009

It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.

Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.

But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.

Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.

But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.

The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.

Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.

One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.

So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.

To their credit, by putting public insurance on the table as a supplement to private plans, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to drag the United States into the club of civilized nations when it comes to health care. We've been in that club since the establishment of medicare more than 40 years ago.

Don't get us wrong here. We are not saying medicare is perfect; it is far from that, and it requires constant improvement, as most Canadians understand. But it is not a bad deal for citizens of this country.

The Republican-led anti-medicare lobby in Congress knows these numbers and facts. But they are regarded as inconvenient truths that must be ignored in the crusade to discredit the Canadian approach to health insurance, to ensure no public option creeps into the U.S. system. Anti-government ideology is running amok in Washington, trumping facts and rational debate, distorting one of the most important public policy issues the United States has grappled with in decades.

Ultimately, the U.S. public will pay the price for that.

Eugene Lang is a former senior economist at Finance Canada. Philip DeMont served as a senior policy adviser to Ontario's health minister.

It's not rare for Canadians to crow about being better than America though. I think it irks them to no end when they realize their the only party to this supposed rivalry.

The Canadian system is not better than the American system. The French system, perhaps.

[trish]

Well, I'm glad you settled that. Let's have the French system.

[TommyFoxtrot]

Well, I'm glad you settled that. Let's have the French system.


I'm surprised the French system doesn't come up more often in debates. Obviously the government and interest groups have people studying France, Canada, the UK etc. but the masses aren't being exposed to that part of the argument. I'm surprised Dem's haven't done a better job of framing their argument in that approach. It is very easy for the Repubs to just trot out the weaknesses in the Canadian system or the horror stories coming out of the UK.

[Helvis2012]

Why do people must resort to name calling




Maybe it's the same reason why people butt in with stupid comments that display a complete lack of knowledge of the subject at hand.

For instance, I know, as well as you, that you don't know much about the Health Care Bill and it's various versions that is being considered by congress, but for some reason, you choose a side and worse, one that is patently false and then go on to declare who is right and who is wrong.

PWNED? You have no idea.