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Canadians overwhelmingly prefer their health
care system to the health care system in the U.S.
A solid majority of Canadians believe that their health care system is working well. The results of a recent poll were published on July 5, 2009. The poll was conducted by Harris/Decima one of Canada’s best-known and highly respected market research firms, with offices in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Senior Vice President of Harris/Decima, Jeff Walker, was quoted as saying “Perhaps contrary to impressions in the media, most Canadians believe that on balance our health care system works well and is far superior to the US model of health treatment.”
Canadians were asked if “overall the Canadian health care system was performing very well, fairly well, not very well or not at all?”
The reported results were broken down by province, political affiliation, sex, age and income.
Overall the results were as follows:
Working very well 12%
Working well 58%
Not working well 19%
Not working at all 9%
There was strong support for the system working well or very well throughout most regions of the country. Only the residents of Quebec reported numbers different than the rest of the country. 52% of residents of Quebec said the system worked well; 43% said the system did not work well.
When asked “Would you say that Canada’s health system is superior to the US system?” an overwhelming majority preferred the Canadian system to the U.S. model.
Prefer Canadian system 82%
Prefer American system 8%
Once again the figures were marginally different in Quebec but even there 69% preferred the Canadian system and only 19% preferred the U.S. model.
This survey was conducted between June 4 and June 8, 2009. Harris/Decima reports a margin of error of 3.1% 19 times out of 20.
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Comments
Most Canadian's have never experienced the US system to make a fair comparison. There was a Study done a few years ago with Americans living in Canada who have experience with both.
www.openmedicine.ca/article/viewFile/39/42
The Canadian system was given top marks for fairness, cost, and efficiency. However, the people surveyed (well educated and prosperous) preferred treatment in the US.
It's a shame we have to choose between the Canadian and American system. I think it's in our nature to not look beyond north america in a lot of regards... WHO no longer releases healthcare system rankings, but in the last one (2000 I think), Canada and the U.S. ranked 30th and 37th respectively.
I'm not saying our system is awful, its not - but there are examples out there of systems that work significantly better. :) It would be nice to be able to cherry pick a few components from well functioning healthcare delivery models from around the world.
The only reason this doesn't happen is because our health care system has been trumpeted as such an emblem of national pride (and rightly so to a point) that any tampering with it would bring down a government. There is just too much political risk to make imrpovements.
Have you ever looked up what % of any budget healthcare consumes? In about a decade you won't have to look it up - it will be 100%. :(
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