“Canadian Health Care, Even With Queues, Bests U.S.”

Well don’t that beat all.

“There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care,” said Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health- policy specialist and pediatrician who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “That’s just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much more contained costs.”

Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer, according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations.

Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19 countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths.

We Canucks already knew that. Instead of spending three times as much money on half as much health care, we’ve implemented a Single Payer plan that preserves our ability to choose our doctors, ensures everyone (or very nearly everyone) is insured, provides equal health care to the US’ “shining example”, and nobody’s profiteering off people’s deaths like hideous ghouls.

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“Canadian Health Care, Even With Queues, Bests U.S.”
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