Canada and Britain, Britain and Canada: a myopic focus on health-insurance reform

The Canadian flag before 1965

Few matters have polarized the American public as much as health-insurance/care reform, a concept that is a characteristic of every rich, free nation on this Earth. While many arguments have been made against changing the fundamentals of our for-profit system, the logic employed by detractors often fails when put under scrutiny.

A few months back, whilst discussing the respective merits of healthcare in other nations, a co-worker quipped, "have you seen Canada?" The intonation in her voice made it very clear: Canada, thanks to anecdotal stories in our news, has a failed system of delivering health care, any attempt to mimic it would place our country in the same "desperate" state.

If Canada is not being utilized as the template for a failed health-care system, then its mother country of Britain is. Opponents of a public option are quick to point out the deficiencies in both the Canadian and British systems.

Naturally, any institution run by human beings is going to be an inherently flawed system. Yet, the inordinate focus on the "failures" in both Britain and Canada so often come from those who work on the emotions of their listeners rather than their analytical abilities.

Canada has a health-care system run by provincial governments in a nation that houses a population of 30,000,000 whereas the United Kingdom is a nation with 1/5th of the population of the United States. No one mired in reality could possibly think that the systems of either country could be completely overhauled onto a nation with as large and diverse a population as ours, yet that is what is being preached via talk radio: we will have the Canadian or British system imposed upon us and it will fail miserably as it did in those two nations.

To buttress the argument that Canadian and British health care are failures, we are treated to anecdotal stories about mishaps occuring in the hospitals of both nations, waiting lists and general discontent, plus health tourism by Canadians in the United States. While no one can gainsay that there is justifiable discontent with the healthcare systems in both nations as there is in every single nation on Earth, why is it that so few stop to consider the following questions:

1. Exactly how many Canadians come to the U.S. each year for treatment denied them in their home country?

2. What percentage of Canadians surveyed want their current system dismantled and replaced with something akin to our system in America?

3. If you were to ask the non-Canadian telling you how horrid the system up north is, would that same person be able to tell you the name of Canada's Prime Minister, its capital and its population? If not, what makes you think him capable of giving you an intelligent analysis of that country's system?

4. Does Britain allow a private alternative to the NHS? If so, why do you so often hear that all British people are wholly reliant on the NHS and have no private option? Is that not similar to saying that America has only public schools and one may not opt for private instruction?


A careful look at the statistics that are so readily available from reliable sources such as the World Health Organization, almanacs and other resources will yield the answers to questions that should be posed regarding the health care systems in the U.K. and Canada. Yet, despite our vast learning resources, we still have an intellectually lazy component of our population who would rather rely on hearsay, rumors and anecdotes rather than numbers.

What is also alarming is the inordinate focus on these two nations when all the rich, free nations of the Earth have universal health care. While the British and Canadian systems have their own flaws and merits, why so little focus on the systems of Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Iceland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Malta and others? Once again, we cannot expect to graft onto a nation of 310,000,000 what has worked in a small nation such as Belgium, but the countries in question are still worth studying as a careful analysis could reveal their successes and failures as we figure out how to accommodate our large and diverse populace.

The standard line of "well, look at Canada and Britain!" as a means of discouraging health-insurance reform in the United States is intellectually dishonest. The person in question is usually not inviting you to make an exhaustive analysis of the systems of both countries, he wants to introduce you to what he has heard via anecdotal stories, ones the credulous will easily believe. The fact is that although both nations have serious issues which need to be addressed, there is no mass movement in either nation to dismantle what is considered to be the cornerstone of their civil society. Discontent with the system in both nations means a desire to improve what already exists, not switch over to America's strictly for-profit system. The next time someone brings up how "everyone" comes to America for health care, please ask him to cite his sources, demanding an exact figure as to how many people out of the millions residing in rich nations actually came to the U.S. for treatment. Such information can be found in Forbes, hardly an organ of the radical left.

The fact remains that universal health care is a staple of all civilized societies on this planet from Australia to Denmark to Germany to Japan. All of the industrialized nations have labored hard to install a system that could best accommodate their respective populations and so far, we have not been treated to demonstrations in the streets of Sydney or Tokyo or Tel Aviv calling for its elimination. America is indeed a special case owing to the great size of our nation not only in geographic terms, but also in regards to our populace. It is dismaying to hear so many, particularly those who take pride in American ingenuity, our ability to take something invented elsewhere and make it function at optimal level, cling to the belief that we lack the ability to do better than what we have now.