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Essay on National Health Care in Canada
Canada's health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government.
Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living.
Canada's health care system is the subject of much political controversy and debate in the country. Some question the efficiencies of the current system to deliver treatments in a timely fashion, and advocate adopting a private system similar to the United States. Conversely, there are worries that privatization would lead to inequalities in the health system with only the wealthy being able to afford certain treatments.
http://www.canadian-healthcare.org/
In Canada, more than perhaps in any other nation in the late twentieth century, the health care system functioned according to the logic of an accommodation between the medical profession and the state. It was, in economic terms, the logic of an agency relationship in a bilateral monopoly. Under the terms of Canadian Medicare, provincial governments were the "single payers" for most medical and hospital services; a single government plan in each province covered a comprehensive range of medical and hospital services; and no private insurance alternatives for coverage of those services existed. Provincial governments, that is, were essentially monopsonists in the medical and hospital services sector. But they exercised their monopsony power in very gross terms. Decisions about the allocation of resources were made through negotiations with the monopoly providers of services, most particularly with the medical profession. And those negotiating relationships left great discretion in the hands of the organized profession to govern the behavior of its members.
