How Well Do You Know Canada's Single-Payer Health Care System?

Understanding Canada's Single-Payer Health Care System

• Canada's health care system is called Medicare and is a single-payer system that covers all Canadians.
• Most healthcare in Canada is free, with no money out-of-pocket, including medically necessary care, maternity care, and infertility treatments.
• The government pays for about 70% of total health care spending, and the remaining 30% is private spending, mostly on drugs, dentists, and optometry.
• Most hospitals in Canada are publicly funded and operate under a fixed budget, while most family physicians are private and operate on a fee-for-service basis.
• Canada negotiates at a federal level for its drugs, which helps control spending.
• Canada has a reputation for wait times, but data show that most of the wait times are for elective procedures and are not life-threatening.
• Doctors in Canada earn good incomes, with the average income before taxes being about 225,000 Canadian dollars in 2012.
• Doctors in Canada are not flocking to the United States to practice, and surveys show that doctors in Canada like working there more than doctors in the United States.
• There is a myth that Canadians come to the United States for care, but data show that this is mostly apocryphal, and only a small number of Canadians seek care in the United States electively.
• Wait times in Canada are a byproduct of their choice to be fiscally conservative and limit supply, mostly for elective procedures.
• Canada's outcomes are comparable to the United States, and they focus more on outcomes that matter to health and less on process measures.
• Canada's single-payer system is not oppressive, and they made a conscious decision to hold down spending, which is one of the ways they control costs.

Test your knowledge of Canada's single-payer health care system with this informative quiz. Discover the ins and outs of Medicare, the government's role in health care spending, the differences between public and private health care providers, and the truth about wait times. See if you can debunk some common myths and learn more about how Canada's system compares to the United States. Take the quiz now and become an expert on Canada's health care system.