alt.politics.economics

RECOMMENDED READ FOR CONSERVATIVES, REQUIRED FOR WEE, TWEE, AND FEY LIBS.

FROM NCPA

HEAD: ONE-TIER HEALTH CARE? NOPE, NOT EVEN CLOSE

Using figures from the massive Joint Canada/ . Survey of Health (JCUSH),
health economists June and Dave O'Neill suggest that what Americans may be
getting for their extra health care dollars is precisely what Canadians have
always thought they had created: a system that is fairer to the poor and
excels at granting broad access to basic care.

The O'Neill's new regression analysis, which claims to be the first that
tackles this issue by comparing apples to apples, suggests that Canadians'
health is actually more income-dependent than Americans'.

There are other surprises for Canadians in the JCUSH numbers:

Although Americans generally have a higher incidence of chronic disease, an
American is more likely to actually receive ongoing treatment for such a
disease than a Canadian.

Emphysema, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease are all more common in
the United States.

But across the board, Canada tends to have higher numbers of untreated
sufferers, despite universal insurance.

Still more significant, perhaps, is the apparent divide in access to
preventative care:

JCUSH has confirmed existing figures showing that the number of middle-aged
Canadian women who have never had mammography for cancer screening is nearly
double that of the United States, and the number of Canadian women under 70
who have never had a Pap smear is triple the . figure.

More than half of American men in middle age have had at least one PSA test
for prostate cancer; in Canada it's only one-sixth.
And the United States is five to six times as effective at getting
middle-aged men and women into a clinic for colorectal cancer screening.

Source: Colby Cosh, "One-tier health care? Not quite; The 'health-income
gradient' here is actually higher than in the .," National Post, October
4, 2007.
*******
And still there are fools on these NG's and elsewhere that want
commie-nation status for our health sysgtem...uggggg-ly. The free market and
ever more competition for health care dollars are the only viable solutions.

Dennis