Harper concerned over Alta. health care reforms

[tracy]

. To make the system sustainable the administrative overhead needs to be slashed. The system is inefficient because people made it inefficient.

Canada's system is actually very efficient when it comes to administrative costs. It's one of the strengths of a single payer system. Even in the US, medicare is the most efficiently run when it comes to amount of money spent on administrative costs (they spend about 7-10 times less than HMOs do).

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0815/is_10_28/ai_108994048

 

[tracy]

Canadian health care in comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada

Despite the relatively high costs of providing health care in Canada's hinterland and the high wages necessary to compete with wages in the United States, Canada spends no more than the G7 average on health care as a percent of its GDP. Most health statistics in Canada are about average for the G7, and vastly better than the world average.

This one is a really good article comparing some differences between the US and Canada as far as health care is concerned (how the two are managed, how technology plays a role, how docs and nurses fare, how income impacts health, etc)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared

 

[Hank C]

Harper is simply grandstanding to gain more votes outside Alberta.Sure allowing docs to work in both the public and private systems may cause conflicts of interest, but having the doctors work a minimum amount of time in the public system before the can switch over to the private is something that should be looked at. Wonder what the effect would be on rural parts though.