aceventura3, I thought that SOP for an OP requires your "take" on the issues that influence you to start a new thread in the first place. I'm going to assume that you want us to respond by offering opinions as to whether the trend in Canada is "good or bad", and how it compares to the healthcare cost and availability to the general U.S. population.
From the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/public_vs_private.html">CBC News site</a>, 2004 data, in Canadian dollars:
Government annual spending on healthcare: $90 billion
(For comparison, I reduced this figure to $80 billion U.S., to deal with a rough but low allowance for currency exchange rates, i.e., the actual figure would be as low as $70 billion U.S.)
That works out, based on a population of 30 million....to $2666 U.S. dollars per capita.
Add in the $40 billion in "private care" spending..... (the government apparently doesn't pay this tab), and, after cutting it to $32 billion U.S., $1066 U.S. is added to the total expenditure, or a total of $3732 per Canadian, in U.S. dollars.
<a href="http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/media/press/release.asp?Counter=1314">From the HHS.gov site</a> , the U.S. 2003 Healthcare spending figure is $1.7 trillion, or $5670 per capita (according to HHS....)
The total healthcare annual spending, per capita, in Canada in 2004 was no more than 65 percent of the equivalent per capita cost, in the U.S. and, from the link above:
Quote:
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....Private payers (primarily private health insurance and payments by individuals for co-pays, deductibles, and services not covered by insurance) funded more than half of national health expenditures in 2003, or $913.2 billion. The public sector funded $766 billion, with the Medicaid program funding 16 percent of aggregate health spending, or $267 billion, nearly equaling the 17 percent, $283 billion, spent by Medicare....
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So....folks.....<h4>Voila !!!</h4> With ten times the population of Canada, U.S. public funding of healthcare expenditure in 2003 was $766 billion U.S., or..... <b>almost exactly ten times the expenditure on primary healthcare funded by Canadian tax dollars to insure that every Canadian received primary care, at a cost that was managed by their government !</b>
The U.S. expenditure of public funds covered only senior citizens and the 40 million uninsured Americans at the time. Another $913 billion was spent to cover everyone else, compared to $32 billion U.S., spent in Canada for private services. This amounts to 30 times what was spent in Canada, or three times the cost, on a per capita, total population comparison basis.
An older <a href="http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:PD0wFqvdO1EJ:www.chass.utoronto.ca/clea/confpapers/DWagner.pdf+doctors+emmigration+from+canada&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7">study</a> that uses 1999 data indicates that Canada suffered a "brain drain" to the U.S. because of higher Canadian taxes on high income individuals, that began at a much lower income threshold in Canada, than in the U.S.
I imagine that, after five years of "Bush tax cuts", the shortfall of medical professionals available to provide healthcare services in Canada has accelerated. Canada enjoys a balance of trade surplus with the reat of the world, with the U.S. trade deficit pushing up nealry to $800 billion annually.
Canada takes in more than $60 million U.S. per day from it's oil exports, while the U.S. borrows $840 million per day (based on $60 per bbl oil price) to purchase foreign oil ($306 billion of the total $800 billion trade deficit.)
The Canadian dollar was worth .77 U.S. dollars, on Jan. 1, 2004. Today it buys .88 of a U.S. dollar. The combined pressure on the U.S. dollar of a massive and continuing trade deficit, and $500 billion plus, annual federal budget deficits should facilitate Canadian dollar exchange parity with the U.S. dollar, before you know it !
Exchange calculator:
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/exchform.html
Here is a link to the
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/in.../26canada.html that the IBD misrepresents as a story of "crisis" in Canadian healthcare.
Given current economic realities, which I would enjoy reading footnoted rebuttals to that offer more favorable scenarios for the future of the buying power of the U.S. dollar, if such an argument can even be credibly advanced,
doesn't it seem reasonable to assume that the emmigration of Canadian healthcare professionals could stop and then reverse?
Which economy has a better chance of sustaining the burden of providing better and more timely healthcare to all of it's residents....say....oh....ten years from now....given what we see as far as cost controls, management of care, availability of care givers going forward, and in terms of the buying power of a given currency and the governments ability to pay or to fund a deficit at a manageable interest rate....Canada's, or the United State's.
I have my doubts if the U.S. will even be able to afford or guarantee relaible availability in 2016 of fuel for it's ambulances or for diesel oil to fuel "back up" generators at it's hospitals.
If Investors Business Daily provided reliable analysis of the true looming problems of importance, I don't think that the state and future trends of Canadian healthcare would be top ten on it's list. Our grandchildren are going to be asking, "what were they thinking"? How could they just stand by, consuming 30 percent of the worlds oil every day, while the price quadrupled, borrowing money until the world refused to lend more, with no conservation plan, no plan to curb imports of foreign made goods or the loss of the national industrial base, and no plan to raise taxes to match increased government spending?
Can anyone argue that there is no chance that a Canadian dollar will fetch five U.S. dollars in 2016? Can anyone argue the opposite?