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Edited on Sun Apr-17-11 05:31 PM by murphyj87
Canadian unemployment rate is 7.7% for March, 2011 (vs. 8.8% in the US).
Canada continues to have NO failed banks (vs. over 300 US failed banks since January 1, 2008).
The gap between rich and poor in Canada is 28% of the gap between rich and poor in the United States.
Canadians have more liberty, rights, and freedoms than Americans have, or ever have had.
Minimum wage in most parts of Canada is over $10.00 an hour. Most Canadians have 6 weeks of vacation with pay each year, and most Canadians retire at age 55 to 60.
The Canadian Government pays 65% of the university tuition of a Canadian university student (foreign students in Canadian universities pay full tuition). How much does the US government pay toward your or your kid's university tuition?
Canadian parents receive a Family Allowance cheque from the Canadian Government of $100 per month per dependent child under age 19. How much does your government pay you to cover expenses for your children? Why assist with child expenses? Because that is the way Canadians and other people in ADVANCED nations do things. The fact that the United States does not do this is because the US is a backward, reactionary society, made up of mostly uninformed, narrow minded people who want to go back to the a time between the 1950's and the Dark Ages.
100% of Canadians have access to health care, paid for through taxation, with no insurance costs, no deductibles, no copays, no out of pocket costs, and costing $1200 a month LESS than Americans pay for taxes + health insurance +deductibles + copays. 100% of Canadians have access to all the healthcare they need in Canada vs. 37% of Americans who have insufficient access to health care to meet their medical needs. Canadians have 82% of gross pay after taxes (which include health costs). US has 81.9% of gross pay after taxes (and then they pay health insurance, deductibles and copays). The largest survey on primary health care ever conducted in Canada found that most people have high praise for their family doctor, and a staggering 92 per cent would recommend their physician to a relative or friend.
Canadians, except those living in Nunavut have excellent access to primary health care: 85 per cent of Canadians aged 12 and older have a regular doctor (only 16% of Americans have a regular family doctor), and two thirds have been seeing the same doctor for five years or more, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) study. 1200 Hip replacements in Canada last year were on people over 85. Do 100% of Americans have access to all the health care they need with no insurance costs, no deductible, no copay, no out of pocket cost of any kind as Canadians do? NO.
85.2% of Canadians reported that they were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the way health care services are provided in their country and an even higher number (89.8%) rated their physician in the same way though slightly lower ratings were awarded to hospitals (79.9% being "satisfied" or "very satisfied"). In a Canadian National Population Health Survey it was reported that only 0.5% of Canadians had sought medical care in the US in the previous year and that 0.5% of the patients treated in Canada by physicians and hospitals were Americans, who had crossed the border into Canada for Canadian medical care.
In 2007, Gordon H. Guyatt et al. conducted a meta-analysis, or systematic review, of studies that compared health outcomes for similar conditions in Canada and the U.S., in Open Medicine. They concluded, "Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent." Guyatt identified studies addressing conditions including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of the 10 studies with the strongest statistical validity, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 were equivalent. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada with a 5% advantage.
The extra cost of malpractice lawsuits is an insignificant proportion of health spending in both the U.S. (0.46%) and Canada (0.27%). In Canada the total cost of settlements, legal fees, and insurance comes to $4 per person each year, but in the United States it is $16 per person of the 63% of Americans who have sufficient health coverage (Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, DVA or DoD) to actually be able to see a physician. Many Americans think that tort reform, as occurred in Texas, will lower U.S. malpractice lawsuits to Canadian levels, however, In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, the data show that the health care system in Texas has grown worse since 2003 by nearly every measure. For example:
The percentage of uninsured people in Texas has increased, remaining the highest in the country with a quarter of Texans now uninsured. The cost of health insurance in the state has more than doubled. The cost of health care in Texas (measured by per patient Medicare reimbursements) has increased at nearly double the national average. Spending increases for diagnostic testing (measured by per patient Medicare reimbursements) have far exceeded the national average
Members of Congress have conjured the supposed benefits of the Texas law out of thin air, said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. the only winners have been the insurance companies and, to a lesser extent, doctors.
Defenders of the Texas law claim it has prompted a massive influx of new doctors into the state, especially in underserved rural areas. But this, too, is false, according to state data. The growth in the number of doctors per capita in Texas has slowed since the liability law took effect. Meanwhile, the number of doctors per capita in underserved rural areas has decreased since 2003.
The only improvement shown by the data is a decline in doctors' liability insurance premiums. But the reported 27 percent decrease in those premiums is dwarfed by the 67 percent reduction in malpractice payments, suggesting that liability insurance companies have pocketed most of the gains. The Texas data provide no evidence that patients or taxpayers have shared in the windfall at all.
As well, the prevalence of unnecessary surgery and cancer deaths caused by unnecessary CT Scans (500 times the radiation of an X-ray) in the U.S causes a large number of the 225,000 deaths per year caused by medical mistakes.
In 2005 Shona Holmes of Waterdown, Ontario, traveled to the Mayo Clinic after deciding she couldn't afford to wait the time that she falsely claimed she had to wait for appointments with specialists through the Ontario health care system . She had characterized her condition as an emergency, said she was losing her sight, and portrayed her condition as life-threatening brain cancer. In July 2009 Holmes agreed to appear in well paid television ads broadcast in the United States with here version of the "truth", warning Americans of the "dangers" of adopting a Canadian style health care system. After her ad appeared, critics pointed out many discrepancies in her story, including that Rathke's cleft cyst, the condition she was treated for, was not a form of cancer, and was in no way life-threatening, in fact, the mortality rate for patients with a Rathke's cleft cyst is zero percent and that she waited as long for treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona as she would have waited in Ontario.
The cost of prescription drugs in Canada is 40% of what they are in the US because the Canadian Government negotiated a licensing deal with drug companies which gives the Canadian Government price controls on prescription drugs in exchange for longer patents for the drug companies. 51% of U.S. primary care physicians report that patients often have difficulty paying for medications, compared with 7% of Canadians who have difficulty paying for prescriptions. How do you Americans like paying 2.5 times what we do for prescription drugs?
In addition to Canada Pension Plan (like US Social Security, except that CPP is 20% more than US SS and can begin at age 60.Survivor benefit of CPP is $2500 while survivor benefit for US SS is only $255), Canadian Senior age 65 and above receives a $600 Old Age Security Pension cheque per month. I retired at age 55, and the total of my pensions, (company pension, Canada Pension, and Old Age Security) is the same as if I were working for $23.45 CDN ($24.23 US) an hour
PLUS an additional means tested Guaranteed Income Suppliment. Do you get Social Security at age 60 as Canadians do? How much does your American government pay you as a pension over and above your Social Security?
The bureaucracy and cost of a Canadian government system is 1/50 of that of an American "for profit" business (like a US health insurance company or hospital). For example, the overhead of US health insurance companies is 41%. Canadian universal single payer health system overhead 6%. Americans pay far more overhead to a "for profit" company than it costs to run a Canadian or American government service. Most of what Canadians pay in taxes is returned to them in goods and services. Most of what Americans pay in taxes and fees goes to overhead and profit of private companies directly or being contracted out to provide government services. Americans view of Canada is severely distorted and based on misinformation. (98.4% of Canadians have no complaint about the amount of taxes they pay, based on the goods and services they receive in return for those taxes.
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