I am constantly amazed how the advocates of our medicare system always compare us to the United States in terms of health-care delivery as stated by Troy Zohner of the North Central Health Coalition (whoever they are).
Recently, the United Nations conducted a survey of health outcomes with more than 80 countries participating. The questions were asked of patients not bureaucrats, which added to its credibility. They were asked about their degree of satisfaction in terms of wait times, specialist referrals, surgery outcomes and general followup.
With a favourable rating in excess of 70 per cent, five countries came out on top which are in no particular order, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium and Japan.
Rather than compare us to the States, maybe we should compare our system to the best. A salient feature of each is that they all involve private/public partnerships whereby the government owns the facility and private business runs the operation or vice versa.
That is where the rubber hits the road with our friends of medicare as any private involvement in health card delivery contradicts their ideology as stated in Troy's letter.
Its unfortunate when ideology trumps best practices by the survey the USA ranked 26th. While Canada ranked 16th.
Maybe Brian Day is simply trying to emulate the best.
Doug Strachan
Prince George
