Letters to the Editor

Canada’s health-care model

John Graham’s article, “Universal winners and losers” (Op-Ed, Friday), grossly mischaracterizes universal health care, particularly with his reference to Canada. Despite the fact that his whole premise about a capitalist cure for health care is simply wrong, he ignores that fact that universal health care in Canada is more accessible and overall less expensive than health care in the United States.

Mr. Graham’s argument rests on the misplaced faith that given a free hand the market will sort itself out for the benefit of society. A comparison between the health-care systems of Canada and the United States shows this is not true for medicine.

Canada spends only 60 percent as much per person on health care as the United States, while guaranteeing access to all Canadians. Moreover, health issues such as infant mortality and life expectancy are better in Canada than the United States. Basically, Canadians have better care, better health and less expensive care.

The “long wait times” often pointed to as criticism only refer to nonemergency care and are not nearly as frequent as Mr. Graham would like one to believe.

Universal health care is built on the idea that health is a basic human right the government should provide and not a privilege based on monetary wealth.

To get a real medical reason for universal health care one should look back to an earlier issue of The Washington Times (March 18) and read Dr. Alex Gerber’s “The health care crisis” (Commentary, March 18). He notes that “The National Institute of Medicine has reported that 18,000 Americans die yearly for lack of health insurance, and our economy loses $60 billion to $130 billion per year due to poor health and early death.”

And despite Mr. Graham’s assertion that “Costs go up, patient satisfaction goes down,” Dr. Gerber writes that “a recent Harris Interactive poll among the leading industrial societies that evaluated patient satisfaction with their health-care system. Canada ranked first and the United States last. An ABC News poll found that, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans prefer a switch to Canada’s health-care system.”

STEVE PRIME

Toronto, Ontario

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John Graham’s “Universal winners and losers” is a reasonable calculation of the costs of a universal health-care system like Canada’s without taking into account any of the benefits. Mr. Graham explains, “the Canadian experience confirms that government monopoly health care, though billed as ‘universal,’ has trouble delivering the goods.” While there are legitimate concerns with some parts of the Canadian system, isn’t increased life expectancy at birth, lower infant mortality rates and a drastically smaller maternal mortality ratio, as compared with the United States, not also a part of the “goods”?

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