Posted on 04/19/2007 3:04:04 PM PDT by amchugh
Background: Differences in medical care in the United States compared with Canada, including greater reliance on private funding and for-profit delivery, as well as markedly higher expenditures, may result in different health outcomes.
Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions.
Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.
(Excerpt) Read more at openmedicine.ca ...
Some background on the formation of the online journal open medicine: http://cjnr.mcgill.ca/archive/38/edit38_2_Gottlieb.htm
Based on some of the horror stories I’ve heard Canadians tell, I don’t agree that their system is superior.
The one area where they appear to excel is prescription drugs, but that’s misleading because they have price controls. We could do the same thing, but if we did, then the drug companies would not have much incentive to invent drugs. Right now, the Canadians have the best of both worlds. They benefit from the US consumer’s willingness to pick up the tab for drug research, so they can fix their prices at very low levels without significantly impacting drug research. They are the classical “free rider.” But we can’t all be free riders. A better strategy than controlling prices would be to try to force the Canadians and other regulated nations to pick up their fair share of the research costs.
There’s an asterisk beside the Canadian treatment results..*
* If you can get it.
I’d like to know how they picked which studies to study.
You not only pay for our pharmaceutical research, but also for our national defense!
Canada is a country of spoiled parasites. I’ve lived in both countries. There is no comparison between the health care systems.
Canada has the most arcane inefficient and uncaring health system probably in the world.
It is generally illegal for a doctor to bill for a covered service.
If you can find a family physician (10% of the population can’t) you have to stay with him. No other doctor will take you.
This family practitioner is the quarterback you will need to go through for EVERYTHING. No other choice!!!!
When you get down to the part under RESULTS to the "end stage renal disease" they neglect to note that African-Americans have a far greater incidence of this than do all other Americans.
Conclusion: totally intellectually dishonest leftwingnut report.
Yup, there is no honest reporting of anything related to healthcare in Canada. It is our Global Warming. Doubters will be shot!
We have no reliable outcome reporting.
We designed an executive information system for hospitals back in the late 80’s, early 90’s. We modeled (with their actual data) a number of large canadian hospitals. We also did similar sized US hospitals.
Canadian hospitals expended 82% of total budget for payroll!!!! This exluded doctors who are independently financed.
The split for similar US hospitals was 55%.
To reduce cost in a canadian hospital required a reduction of the 18% used for all non payroll costs. That is because everyone in the hospital belongs to a union. Salaries NEVER go down.
It is somewhat easier to make fiscal adjustments in the 45% plus in the US much of the payroll is no union and therefore somewhat flexible.
The critera for study selection is spelled out quite well in the methods section of the article.
I know many of the physicians who conducted this systematic review. Obviously they do have some of their own biases but the results of the paper speak for themselves. It is always difficult to perform this type of research and it would seem there were a paucity of studies from which to draw conclusions.
There are also numerous issues with prescription drug costs and support from the US vs Canada, the access to expensive care and surgical interventions in the US compared to Canada, who pays for R & D for medications, new developments in technology, etc.
What I do find impressive is that for the conditions noted in the article, the single payer format in Canada seems to do about as well as the US (or better ?? with End Stage Renal Disease).
I have not read the study in detail yet, but for all the money we pay in the US for healthcare, I would hope that we would have a little better comparison than this.
From what little I understand about how the Canadian health systems operates (and it is very little at that), I thought that Canada achieved successful outcomes by concentrating their treatment on the cases where a positive outcome is possible or likely, and writing off the no-hopers and CTDs. Basically, triage techniques writ large. While that is possible in a system where the patients are homogeneous from a policy perspective, I don’t think it’ll teach many useful lessons to the American health care system where different insurance plans effectively prioritize patients for different treatments.
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