Standards of evaluation in academic research

U.S. Vs. Canada Health System

Comparing Two Health Systems:

The United States vs. Canada

Healthcare has become an issue of great importance in the United States. It has dominated debates everywhere. During the upcoming election, it is certain that healthcare will be on minds ranging from recent college graduates, to senior citizens and will be hotly debated on television. For those who have never experience anything but the American system, government provided or "nationalized" healthcare seems almost socialist. However, a more attainable, affordable, and even social-tendency-based health system could not hurt America. Yet the question, of course, remains whether America would benefit from such a system over its vast territory. Though the President has enacted reforms, it remains to be seen how these will be carried out and improved upon. In an effort to better understand various health systems, therefore, this paper will focus on a comparison between the United States and the Canadian system, and will evaluate four areas: access, cost, quality and continuity.

The United States

Though many in the press have called the U.S. health system a "mess," this is actually a very efficiently run business-like system, which, of course, may not necessarily benefit the customer. Kao-Ping Chua (2006) quotes the American health system as being both "best health care system in the world" due to the fact that there is "freely available medical technology and state-of-the-art facilities." However, he also states,

"At the other extreme are those who berate the American system as being fragmented and inefficient, pointing to the fact that America spends more on health care than any other country in the world yet still suffers from massive uninsurance, uneven quality, and administrative waste."

From this short quotation, one can see that the access of American healthcare, though seemingly available to all, is not so easy because many are uninsured. Poor people, for example, due to the excessive cost of healthcare, which can range anywhere from around $200 to $1,000 monthly, depending on coverage, cannot afford paying these sums, For this reason, for this group, access if not so widespread and cost in too much.

The cost of American healthcare, in fact, is too great for most people, and many cannot see anyone but insurance companies profiting. It is, thus, expected that most Americans are insured through work. However, due to the recent economic events, many are out of work and, therefore, uninsured, which is especially true for the younger groups. Thus, though quality may be fantastic, access, cost and continuity are not necessarily frontrunners in the American system.

Canada

The Canadian health system, in contract with the U.S. health system, is publicly funded and is mostly free for citizens. Thus, access is of relative ease, and cost is relatively low. The system's website states that,

"The federal government, the ten provinces, and the three territories have key roles to play in the health care system in Canada. Health Canada's mandate is to help Canadians maintain and improve their health."

One must ask, then, if everything is mostly free in Canada, which is a similar system as in Europe, what, then is the quality of this, and the continuity. For one, continuity is relatively constant, due to the low cost and the ease of access. Quality, then, is said to be of the utmost importance and of the highest degree by the Health website mentioned above. According to a Gallup poll, the Canadian people were actually the most satisfied with their health care systems and with its quality, which leads one to believe that, in fact, the quality in Canada is quite comparable to that in the United States.