Will This Ever Enter the Debate?

I am currently making my way through Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist. A section that will be near and dear to the heart of every Canadian is the one analyzing public vs. private health care. Harford states that Britain’s public system has a 25% satisfaction rate while America’s private system has a 17% rate. I challenge anyone to find another industry with such low levels of customer satisfaction.

The book then goes on to expand the debate beyond the tiresome “all or nothing” 100% private vs. 100% public rhetoric that seems to mire the dialogue here in Canada. Singapore uses “forced saving and catastrophic insurance to make sure costs were manageable but keeping the power of patient choice at the heart of the system.” Imagine a system that operates sort of like a pension plan for most procedures except for extraordinary (i.e. “catastrophic”) circumstances.

And what are the outcomes?

“The typical Singaporean lives to the age of eighty, and the cost of the system (both public and private) is a thousand dollars per person – less than the cost of the bureaucracy alone in the United States. Each year, the typical Singaporean pays about seven hundred dollars privately (the average American pays about twenty-five hundred dollars privately) and the government spends three hundred dollars per person (five times less than the British government and seven times less than the American government).”

Perhaps it’s time for our “experts” to broaden the debate?

Motivational Tunes:

Blue Man Group – I Feel Love

Dio – Rainbow in the Dark

Morrissey – We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful