Canadian Health Care: Fact vs. Fiction

I recently saw an interesting report comparing US and Canadian health care. It's a couple of years old, the figures are for 2005, but it clearly illustrates one of the fallacies perpetuated by opponents of single-payer health care for the US.

We regularly hear stories of Canadians coming to the US for medical treatment because of alleged long waits for treatment in Canada - or even stories of someone dying while on a Canadian wait list. And of course the blame is always placed on the Canadian government's involvement in the process.

Consider these numbers though: in 2005 annual per capita expenditures for health care in the US were $6,401, vs. $3,359 in Canada!* Isn't it likely the shortage of services in Canada is due more to underfunding than to the fact that it's a single-payer system? Wouldn't raising per capita spending by say 50% likely eliminate most of the problem? And at $5,000 that would still be far far less than what we spend in the US.

* http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20071205/

Costa Rica Photos

I posted all (~600) of my Costa Rica photos, some good, some bad, mostly just so-so, on Picasa Web: http://picasaweb.google.com/tom.severns/CostaRica#