by Sally Pipes |
February 03, 2020 08:39 AM
About 56% of people in the United States favor
"Medicare for all," according
to polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation out last week.
That's an increase of 3 percentage points from
last November.
That majority would be wise to take a look
across our northern border. Waits for care in Canada's government-run health
insurance system, the closest analog to "Medicare for all" in the
world, are spiraling. The remedy for those waits, according
to a new report from the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute? A
dose of U.S.-style private insurance.
Right now, Canada is the only
high-income country with universal health coverage that bans
its citizens from purchasing private insurance for anything deemed
"medically necessary." "Medicare for all" would make the
U.S. the second.
Supporters of the ban claim it preserves
equitable access to care. Wealthy Canadians can't use private insurance to pay
for faster access to care.
But as a result, everyone must wait their turn
for care paid for by the public system. Last year, Canadians faced a median
wait of nearly 21 weeks to receive specialist treatment after
getting referred by a general practitioner. Certain procedures come with longer
waits. End-to-end, patients waited a
median of 39 weeks for orthopedic surgery in 2019.
Private insurance could alleviate those waits.
The Fraser Institute's research concludes that those using private insurance in
other countries demand less care under the publicly funded coverage scheme.
That frees up resources to treat needier patients, who must rely exclusively on
public insurance. The result, per the new Fraser report? "A private health
insurance market in Canada would
reduce wait times for most, if not all, Canadians."
As Canada shows, government-provided universal
coverage, and its ban on private insurance, isn't worth the wait.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the
Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute.
Her latest book is False
Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All, (Encounter
2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.
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