They said that Ottawa should transfer C$2 billion more each year to the provinces. If not the system will be in a shambles by the end of the decade.
The country's leaders also accepted that they had to reform their health care practices. They said it was necessary to make the national system more sustainable. They pledged to look at ways of doing this.
Canada has always been famous for having a universal health care system. The trouble is it is bursting at the seams.
This was the conclusion at the end of a two-day meeting of the new Council of the Federation, a bi-annual meeting of the provincial premiers and territorial leaders.
There is general confusion in the funding of the nation's health care. Finance Minister, Raloh Goodale had announced a one time boost of C$2 billion for health care funding. However, he also announced that equalization payments to the 8 have-nots (provinces) would go down by C$3 billion. In fact, a real drop of one billion.
The premiers (in Canada) called on Ottawa to adopt the recommendation of the Romanow Commission on Health Care. This commission said that the federal share of health care funding should go up by 25% (currently 16%). " So with this in mind HOW can Obama or any politician for that matter even consider wanting Americans to suffer the same fate? And IT WILL HAPPEN HERE if we are dumb enough to adopt this stupid socialistic system of health care that HAS NEVER WORKED anywhere its been tried (except of course for the big governments that use it)
HIGH-PRICED CANADIAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM PROVIDES POOR ACCESS
Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) except Iceland and Switzerland, Canada ranks poorly in several categories according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.
For instance:
- Canada ranks 17th in the percentage of total life expectancy that will be lived in full health.
- It also ranks 22nd in infant mortality, 15th in perinatal mortality and fourth in mortality amenable to health care.
- Other rankings for Canada included 9th in potential years of life lost to disease, 10th in the incidence of breast cancer mortality and 2nd in the incidence of mortality from colorectal cancer.
Further:
- On an age-adjusted, comparative basis, Canada, relative to comparable countries of the OECD, has a small number of physicians, ranking 24th out of 28 countries.
- Notably, Canada had the second-highest ratio among 20 OECD countries for which data were available in 1970.
- Since 1970, however, all but one of these countries have surpassed Canada's growth in doctors per capita.
- While the age-adjusted proportion of doctors in Canada grew by 24 percent, the average increase in the proportion of doctors in the other 19 countries was 149 percent.
With regard to age-adjusted access to high-tech machinery, Canada performs dismally by comparison with other OECD countries:
- Canada ranks 13th of 24 in access to MRIs and 18th in access to CT scanners.
- It also ranked 7th of 17 in access to mammographs, and tied with two other nations at 17th of 20 in access to lithotriptors.
Lack of access to machines also means longer waiting times for diagnostic assessment, and mirrors the longer waiting times for access to specialists and to treatment found in the comparative studies examined for this study.
Source: "The Fraser Institute: High-Priced Canadian Health Care System Provides Poor Access to Care Compared to Other Nations," Fraser Institute," November 5, 2007.
For study:
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/COMMERCE.WEB/product_files/HowGoodHC2007.pdf
For more on Health Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
The Canadian health care system that the lib's speak so highly of lags behind even Europe's bad health care, the study says:
OTTAWA — "Canada ranks 23rd out of 30 countries surveyed in the “consumer friendliness” of its health care system, says a new report compiled by European and Canadian researchers.
The study undertaken by a pair of private think tanks — the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy and Brussels-based Health Consumer Powerhouse — measured Canada's performance against that of 29 European nations.
It found Canada scored well in terms of medical outcomes, a category that included factors such as heart attack and cancer survival rates and data on a range of other medical procedures.
But the Canadian score plunged in areas such as waiting times for treatment, range of services available, ready access to new drugs and some diagnostic tools, and the legal rights of patients.
Austria was at the top of the list, with an overall score of 806 of a possible 1,000 points on a complex statistical grid.
The next five finishers in order were the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and Sweden.
Canada was three-quarters of the way down the list with 550 points out of 1,000, a showing that was better than countries like Latvia and Poland but not as good as the U.K., Czech Republic, Spain and Estonia.
The study is billed as the first annual Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index, although it consists essentially of plugging Canadian data into European rankings that have been published for the last several years.
Comparing Canada with Europe, rather than with its next-door neighbour the United States, offers a better picture of the state of national health care, say the studies sponsors.
“The Canadian health care system — publicly financed and governed — has much more in common with most European systems than it does with the American one,” said a joint statement by Johan Hjertqvist of Health Consumer Powerhouse and Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre.
They promised another report later this year comparing Canadian provinces with each other to “support further debate” about health care in Canada.
Mr. Hjertqvist has made a name in his native Swede, and across Europe, as an advocate of a greater role for private medical services within an overall system that is publicly funded.
The Frontier Centre describes itself as non-partisan and independent, but critics say it has a decidedly right-wing philosophy.
The organization was at the centre of a controversy last year when it was given a contract by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper to study electoral reform — even though it was already on record as favouring the current first-past-the-post system.
The consumer health study notes that “no one country excels across the entire range” of statistical indicators used to compile the rankings.
It notes, however, that countries with “pluralistic financing” — systems that feature multiple insurers and a for-profit component — generally score high on issues like patient rights and access to medical records and information.
By contrast, countries like Canada suffer from an “expert-driven attitude” that isn't as consumer friendly.
The thumbnail verdict on Canada is: “Solid outcomes, moderate to poor provision levels and very poor scores with regard to patients' rights and accessibility.”
The study also notes that Canada spends more on health care than any other country surveyed, even though it obtains poorer than average results.
That means Canada ranks dead last out of 30 on yet another statistical grid called the Bang for the Buck index." If this is the debate for socialized medicine, there's NO hope of real change...JUST MORE OF THE SAME GOVERNMENT FAILURE EXEMPLIFIED!