The U.S. health care system is not a universally accessible system – it is a publicly and privately-funded patchwork of fragmented systems and programs. Insured Americans are covered by both public and private health insurance, with a majority covered by private insurance plans through their employers.
National Medicare Week has just passed, buoyed with optimism as a fresh-faced government takes the reins in Ottawa — elected partly on a promise of renewed federal leadership on health care. Yet these “sunny ways” are overcast by recent developments at the provincial level that entrench and legitimize two-tier care. Saskatchewan has just enacted a licensing […]
You are the parent of a sick child. You have a limited budget and you must decide to buy the medicine the doctor prescribed for your child or provide food and shelter for your family instead. What do you do?
One morning, the media headline pronounces Canada’s health system should model that found in the Netherlands; the next week, we should follow Germany’s example, and yet another says Australia is leading the pack. Then there are the inevitable comparisons to the U.S. health system.
As the federal election campaign wages, Canadians should be pressing federal political parties to take a leadership position on the healthcare file.
Canadian governments have done little to address the crisis faced by autism families across the country. This sentiment was true in 2007 when it was put forward in the cross-party Senate report on the state of funding for the treatment of autism in Canada, aptly titled, Pay Now or Pay Later. And until recently, this sentiment could be used to sum up the role of the federal government which has largely left the crisis up to provincial ministries to manage.
For the last thirty years or so, Canadians have repeatedly flagged healthcare as the most important national concern and the issue they want their political leaders to prioritize. Surveys and studies and polls and panels — there have been plenty — all come up with the same finding: Canadians care about healthcare.
I am privileged to help patients deal with a variety of common disorders such as ear infections, pharyngitis and sinus inflammation. People suffer a great deal from these problems, especially when they are in the acute phase.
Every week a new study on autism seems to surface, and too often, there are errors or critical omissions in some of the media coverage on the topic.
In spite of very high expenditures for drug coverage, one in 10 Canadians cannot afford to fill their prescriptions. The current patchwork of public and private plans across the country means that Canadians are covered for their prescription drugs based on where they live or work, rather than on their medical needs.
