Universal Health Care ‘Problematic’: National Post Op-Ed
Published in the National Post on November 19, 2010
By Michael Bliss
In a way that Canadians do not like to recognize, modern history has already passed stark and sobering judgment on Canadian medicare.
Despite the system’s popularity and iconic status; despite the belief by many Canadian health experts that the Canada Health Act system, a single-payer government monopoly, is the best way to deliver modern healthcare; and despite years of nationalist proclamation that Canadian health insurance ought to be a model to the world (and especially to the United States), no country has adopted the Canadian model.
In the eyes of the world, Cuba and North Korea perhaps excepted, Canadian medicare is not a model.…
Critical Condition: A Historian’s Prognosis on Canada’s Aging Healthcare System
Deductible’s Demise Offers Lessons: Globe And Mail Op-ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on September 27, 2010
By Mark Stabile
On Wednesday, the Government of Quebec announced it was dropping a proposal for a health-care deductible on users of doctors’ services. The deductible’s objectives were to raise money for the government and to increase people’s awareness of the cost of health care.
In most provinces, health-care expenditures continue to grow faster than GDP. Quebec’s Finance Minister discovered, however, that proposing a deductible – a $25 user fee for doctors’ visits – generated significant resistance.
Sevil N-Marandi and I studied the issues and found that the failed proposal would not have met its two objectives. It would have generated between…