Saskatchewan and the Canadian healthcare system

You never know what Google Alerts will bring up on any given day, but today my alert for “Canadian Studies” brought me to a multi-story special feature in the Billings Gazette (yes, as in Billings, Montana) on the Canadian healthcare system. The comments readers have left under these stories are equally interesting as readers debate why they should or shouldn’t help pay for the healthcare needs of “the poor” (one reader’s use of quotation marks, not mine). To my mind, though, the Gazette journalists get it right and they do a great job of pointing out how the Canadian health care system finds its origins in Saskatchewan, and in particular the town of Swift Current (or Speedy Creek as my dad sometimes calls it).

While some of the commenters on these stories spout myths about Canadians flooding the US system and Canadians paying 50% in income taxes, the Gazette gives a balanced take on the pros and cons of the Canadian system. They also help dispel some of these myths, though clearly many of the people leaving comments on the stories didn’t fully read any of the articles. As the Gazette points out,

The tax burden for Canadians is generally higher than in the United States. Data from 2004 say the Canadian tax burden is 33.5 percent of its gross domestic product, while in the United States it was 25.5 percent. But Canadians don’t have to buy insurance or pay out-of-pocket expenses for basic health care.

Canadian officials also point to the low administrative costs of their nonprofit system. Alberta health officials say a mere 3.5 percent of their public health care dollar is spent on administration.

In the United States, private health insurance companies say they spend about 15 percent of premiums on administrative costs and overhead.

There’s also a good story on the doctor currently working in the fine town of Maple Creek. Originally from South Africa, he has a lot of good things to say about the Canadian system:

“The level of care you can provide for every person, for everyone, is basically the same, throughout,” said Le Roux, who moved here with his family from South Africa, in part because he wanted to practice in a broad-based public health system. “You never have to think, ‘Can this patient afford the ultrasound, or the CT scan or the MRI?’ If I think this guy needs the CT scan, I can send him for it.”

The fact that the Canadian healthcare system began in Saskatchewan says a lot about the difference a small, resourceful region can make when they find a creative way to address a problem experienced by the whole country. If you’ve been to Saskatchewan and met the people there, I don’t think you’d be surprised to learn that Saskatchewan is the birthplace of public healthcare in Canada.

Oh, by the way, go Riders!