Op-Eds
Published in the Globe and Mail on November 19, 2010
By Michael Bliss
There are no quick “fixes” to Canada’s system of national health insurance. Many prescriptions for change can’t be implemented because of public resistance. But it’s feasible to reduce the financial burdens of health care on Canadian governments. The history of our other major social programs suggests we can usefully revisit the idea of universal entitlement to benefits. As it does with child care and old age pensions, the state can helpfully subsidize the needy. It doesn’t have to pay for everyone’s health care.
What are the lessons taught by our history of medicare? My first conclusion is that we should get over being obsessed by the cost…
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.…
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…
À votre santé: Is the Canadian healthcare system really so bad?
In The Health-care Grass Isn’t Always Greener, (The Globe & Mail, April 6th 2009), C.D. Howe Institute Research Fellow, Dr. Claire de Oliveira, finds that improvements to our healthcare system are needed and must revolve around cost-effective solutions while drawing relevant lessons from other countries. Dr. de Oliveira suggests the use of co-payments as a type of improvement that could potentially control costs by discouraging overuse of the system, could be set to low levels for the general population, and refunded to lower-income families to ensure equity in access.
For the OpEd click here.