How "healthy" is our health care in America today?

It’s difficult to understand why the word “socialized medicine” strikes such fear in Americans.  It’s almost a visceral response, negating what most of us know and have heard about other successful plans in other countries that most folks here would brand “socialist”.

Let’s take Canada for instance.  If we look at the numbers, we see that  spending in Canada is projected to reach $160 billion, or 10.6% of GDP, in 2007. This is slightly above the average for OECD countries, and substantially below the 15.2% of GDP taken by up healthcare in the United States.  This should go aways towards quieting some of the accountants amonst us, and should be looked at by congresspersons that are freaking out about “cost”.

Canada’s system is known as a single payer system, where basic services are provided by private doctors (since 2002 they have been allowed to incorporate), with the entire fee paid for by the government at the same rate. Most family doctors receive a fee per visit. These rates are negotiated between the provincial governments and the province’s medical associations, usually on an annual basis. A physician cannot charge a fee for a service that is higher than the negotiated rate — even to patients who are not covered by the publicly funded system — unless the physican opts out of billing the publicly funded system altogether. Pharmaceutical costs are set at a global median by government price controls. Other areas of health care, such as dentistry and optometry, are wholly private.

Considerable attention has been focused on two issues in Canada: wait times and health human resources.

There is also a debate about the appropriate ‘public-private mix’ for both financing and delivering services. Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 57% of Canadians reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist; 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room.  I’ve heard many horror stories from friends and family here in Los Angeles, where they spent more than 12 hours waiting in an emergency room at local hospitals.  A 4 hour wait seems trivial.  I also know from first hand experience that getting into see a specialist is often just as difficult.  One of my family members needed to go to a specialized clinic rescently, only to find out that “new patients were no longer admitted” due to the current waiting list of existing patients.  Hmmmmm. Of course, this doesn’t even address the issue that close to 50 million Americans can’t get access to health care at all!

In regards to health-care professional shortages, their is some issue here,  With 2.1 doctors per thousand population in 2006, Canada is well below the OECD average of 3.1. Canada’s 8.8 nurses per thousand was also below the OECD average of 9.7.  However, here’s an interesting statistic: According to a 2007 article from CTV News, the Canadian medical profession is suffering from a brain drain. The article states, “One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practising medicine in the United States.

Now if the U.S. implements a plan similar to Canadas, and health care costs become more contained, it only seems logical that Canada’s “brain drain” will slow considerably.  Doctor’s in Canada average an income of $202,000/year.  I think that kind of income should go a long way in keeping the financial incentive alive for new, young doctors.

And Canada’s system, although better than ours, is still ranked below other “socialized” countries, such as England and France.  So what part of a “socialized medicine” approach here in the U.S. is so worrysome?   That statistics stated above are a vast improvement of what we have going right now.