Canadian approaches to health policy decisions: National Health Insurance

In this paper five Canadian health policy decisions and their relevance to the U.S. are described briefly. Three points characterize the Canadian approach to establishing health policy: a) Major health policies in Canada have been hammered out primarily in dialogue - or competition - between the various political parties, when each had power in one Province or in Ottawa. b) Canadian health policies have been essentially pragmatic and incremental, rather than based on a broad ideological or systems approach. c) The Canadian approach to universal health insurance has been the cornerstone of most other health policies. Universal free health care in Canada, run by the government, costs only one-fourth as much to administer as the U.S. co-insurance ridden public-private system. All health care in Canada costs only about three-fourths as much as in the U.S. Finally, what health status measures the authors have rate Canadians as healthier than white Americans, although it would be rash to attribute this to their health care system alone.