Canada's Health Costs vs United States'

[ColdBlooded]

As health costs shoot into the stratosphere, the U.S. has turned to Canada for a steady supply of low-cost drugs and medical care. Overall, medical tourism -- in which U.S. citizens travel to other countries simply for cheap care -- doubled over the course of one year (from 2006-2007).

The Key Issue? Cost.

The key issue was cost. And the perfect illustration is a comparison with Canada. Our neighbors to the north have been able to spend the same amount of money administering free, universal coverage to its 27 million citizens as the single region of New England in the U.S. (which has a meager population of 2.5 million).

Obviously, costs have gone haywire. Have the added costs provided more quality in health care? Or are these costs simply attributable to mismanagement and inefficiencies. Expect this issue to come up more during this year's election coverage.

 

[Fucky McFuckerson]

Awwww...health insurance companies...if it werent for Microsoft, Blue Cross may be the wealthiest company in the US!

 

[Lamberto Quintero]

^Fuck yeah, insurance companies and prescription drug companies are fucking us over big time...

 

[TONY206]

I am not a very good writer at all, but I recently did a report on universal health care. Go to http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d6ft8nc_5hh5p8gc2 if you want to read it. I started out not knowing much at all and I learned a lot of interesting things.


Here is an excerpt on costs:

The costs of premiums and prescription drugs are amongst some of the biggest problems with the healthcare system in the U.S. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust, the costs of premiums have risen 78% since 2001. Their research shows that while the rise in the cost of premiums in 2007 was slightly down from 2006, 7.7% versus 6.1%, workers’ earnings only increased 3.7% while the rate of inflation was 2.6%. In 2000, 69% of employers offered healthcare coverage to their employees. That number declined to 60% over the next five years. Employers say that the number one reason for not offering health insurance is the cost. Of those employers who currently do not offer coverage, 72% say that the cost of providing coverage is “very important.” Employers who do offer health insurance usually only offer one type of plan. The average monthly premium an employee pays for individual coverage is $58 while those with families pay an average of $273 (Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey). Because of the drop in employers who offer healthcare coverage, my current employer has taken this as an opportunity to offer full coverage to full time employees in hopes to reduce the high employee turnover rates. Benefits can be highly attractive to some potential employees, since there are not as many companies that offer coverage these days as there used to be.

Many Americans have trouble paying for prescriptions as well as premiums because prescription drug costs have risen too. On the Kaiser EDU website, Fannie Chen states that Americans purchased 68% more prescriptions in 2004 compared to 1994 while the U.S. population only increased 12% in that same time. In the same period, the cost of prescriptions increased at an average of 8.3% every year. The website makes note of the drug industries profits as well, stating, “Pharmaceutical manufacturing was the most profitable industry in the U.S. from 1995 to 2002, and in 2004 it ranked third with profits after taxes of about 16 percent” (“Prescription Drug Costs&#8221. Many of these manufacturers are able to charge high prices because of patent laws that protect them from other companies using the same formula as them. These patents can last up to 20 years, preventing the manufacturing of more affordable generic drugs. Prescription costs in many other countries are regulated by the government which in turn keeps the prices much more affordable to the citizens. Many Americans who are fed up with the rising prices or simply cannot afford them turn to Canada and the internet to fill their prescriptions, although it is illegal. There are some people that believe prescription drugs in the U.S. would become more affordable if we welcomed foreign markets (“Prescription Drug Costs&#8221.

 

[TONY206]

Here's another key excerpt

You might think that those countries with universal health coverage pay more taxes toward healthcare than does the U.S., but they do not. According to Harvard Medical School professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, “Canadians, Australians, and Western Europeans spend about half what we do on healthcare, enjoy universal coverage, and are healthier” (88). Currently, 59.8% of America’s health spending comes from taxes, which makes it the world’s highest percentage of tax money spent on healthcare. This percentage includes the cost of health benefits for public employees and tax subsidies (88). The Bureau of Labor Education goes on to further support this research by stating, “The United States has by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, based on health expenditures per capita (per person), and on total expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)” (“The U.S. Healthcare System…&#8221. They suggest that administrative costs are estimated to be between 19.3 and 24.1 percent of what is spent on healthcare. Hospitals seek to charge more in other areas to make up for costs due to the large number of people that are uninsured. The U.S. General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budgeting Office reported that if the U.S. were to implement a health system similar to Canada’s, it would reduce the administrative costs and end up paying for itself (“The U.S. Healthcare System…&#8221.