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.