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December 1, 2009

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Letter to the editor:

Canadian health care system gets bad rap

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

Michael J. Palmer’s Sunday letter states, “The Canadian health care system is far worse than ours.” Mr. Palmer uses anecdotal evidence to support his claim. No matter what is reported to have happened to Mr. Palmer’s Canadian uncle or aunt, a more accurate judgment would depend on a more in-depth study.

An article in Open Medicine 2007 by Gordon Guyatt, et al., reviews 38 studies comparing health care outcomes in Canada with those in the United States. According to this review, health care outcomes in Canada are superior to those in the United States, the Canadians pay less for their care, and 16 percent of U.S. citizens have no health care at all.

Although Mr. Palmer warns of “socialized medicine,” the evidence seems to indicate that the Canadians are doing many things right. Further, the speedup and the cost-cutting measures of our deregulated or poorly regulated for-profit system have shown their dark side recently in Nevada. The reuse of syringes to produce a little more profit for our endoscopy mills has resulted in the possible infection of 40,000 of our citizens with hepatitis or AIDS. Perhaps, as Mr. Palmer writes, “there is no such thing as a ‘free ride,’” but we should not have to pay thousands of dollars for a broken-down jalopy either.

Discussion: 1 comment so far…

  1. By RonSmith
    3/11/08 at 10:34 a.m.
    Suggest removal

    10 Myths About Canadian Health Care.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...

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