This is Part I of III

My wife and I were asked by a friend to give her our first impressions of health care in Canada.  My family and I moved to London, Ontario from Seattle, Washington in September of this year so that my wife could pursue a Doctorate in English at the University of Western Ontario.  Since we’ve arrived we’ve talked to many people about the health care issue, and in fact one of the reasons we were so excited to move to Canada was rooted in the scuffle in the United States over health care reform.  Different politicians and pundits and talking heads have evoked Canada and Europe in their examples both supporting and damning certain health care policies.  So for better or for worse, here’s what I’ve come up with.  I have decided to begin this piece with a brief description of the main argument in the United States.  I’ll move on from there to Canadian health care and our impressions thus far.

The health care debate in the U.S. hasn’t changed all that much in the last few decades.  The only things that have changed have been technological advances that have made medical care cheaper and more efficient, but both parties have embraced those changes.  The debate falls almost totally along party lines, with Republicans arguing that more could be done if we allow the free market to do its work, and Democrats arguing that the government should step in and offer insurance by way of a public system which can inevitably charge far less for than private insurance.

The GOP argues that we should do what we can to decrease the cost of providing health care services.  The doctors would then pass along the savings to their patients.  Doctors’ take-home pay is disproportionally less than the price they charge patients because they have to pay for costly malpractice insurance.  Republicans believe that tort reform, along with other reform aimed at reducing government involvement and costly bureaucracy, will ultimately cut a great amount of the costs for health insurance.  I don’t think there is any Republican that has argued that we don’t need to take a look at the insurance industry, but generally speaking the party avoids blaming the insurance industry for directly causing some of the major problems that we face.

Democrats have wavered on their actual solution, and while I traditionally consider myself a liberal person, I have to admit that the Republican Party has proven itself to be far better at sticking to their political guns than have the Democrats.  Without discussing any of the permutations to this general principle, the Democrats believe that government should play a direct role in providing people with health insurance.  They consider health care to be as fundamental to human safety as a police department, fire department, or military and see no reason why the government shouldn’t provide this service to the people.  Various Democrats have put forth various ways to initiate some sort of public system, but it remains to be seen how much of a public or government option makes it into the final draft of the bill (has one already passed? is it going to soon? I’m out of the loop!).

To be continued...here