“Medicare,” provides public funding for all medically necessary hospital and physician services.
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.
The newest report from Canada’s brand name drug makers on access to new drugs has one key message: compared to other countries, Canada goes slow and low. New drugs are slower to be covered by our provincial drug plans and the numbers of people who get access to new drugs are lower than in other countries.
Amalgamation always seems like a good idea. Greater Victoria has 13 municipalities, 13 councils, oodles of separate fire and police departments and multiple separate teams of garbage-persons, road fixers, parks maintainers and others that you need to keep our cities humming.
Normally provincial medical association elections are not national news. The one vote difference between first and second place in the race for president of the Doctors of BC – later declared a tie after a recount – might be enough to grab people’s attention.
Does more healthcare create better outcomes? In other words, do more medications, tests and interventions necessarily result in healthier patients?
It turns out more care is, all too often, unnecessary care.
In Canada, only one in five people with depression gets appropriate treatment. And in Ontario, only one in three patients discharged from psychiatric hospitalization will get a follow-up within the month. Why is Canada doing so poorly in helping people with mental illness?
Employers in Canada spend an estimated 5 billion dollars a year on drug coverage for their employees. Yet, private plans are notoriously inefficient and they often cover higher priced drugs that are not necessarily better for consumers’ health, explains Alan Cassels.
Public opinion polls show many Canadians worry about surgical wait times. Anecdotal media reports and heated political debates encourage this worry. But the question remains: Are Canadians waiting too long for surgery?
