A really good article on the differences between American-style charity and the Canadian sense of the common good:
Oprah's Big Give began with 10 contestants, one eliminated each week for failing to pull in enough money for charity and the biggest winner receiving a surprise $1 million purse. Its philosophy is simple, and American: Philanthropy and the private sector, it suggests, can best provide services and solve problems, with the added bonus – and this is important – that they cause no loss of personal liberty.
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In this country, Canadians still cling – under duress and escalating pressure – to the notion we can be a progressive society through our collective tax dollars. It's an idea being eroded as effectively as the Arctic ice cap and yet, together, we try to offer quality education and medical care, maintain the country's infrastructure and service the citizenry.
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Although Canadian taxes, particularly corporate taxes, have fallen under both Liberal and Conservative governments, statistics still mark the differences. In 2006, OECD calculations pegged taxes as a portion of GDP at 33.6 per cent in Canada and 25.9 per cent in the U.S. Indices show you get what you pay for. Poverty rates are higher per capita in America, as is infant mortality, while the incomes of the elderly are lower and life expectancy is shorter, etc., etc.
2 comments:
regarding the healthcare issue: this probably sounds like a very trite attempt to explain a possible solution, but...what I think you have to do is a.) lower the cost of education for healthcare providers (medical school is ridiculously expensive), b.) convince healthcare professionals to take less money, and c.) convince every tom dick and harry to stop suing the pants off of anything that moves.
Those three elements would probably sink healthcare in canada, or any other country for that matter.
Why does the U.S. have these issues? I'm no expert, but I would suppose the problem is that the U.S. has built its healthcare (service? industry? I'll take the high road and stick with service for now) service in an environment that has fostered feelings of entitlement among physicians and resentment among those for whom they care. It's a self-defeating system: people constantly sue healthcare providers, causing insurance rates to skyrocket, causing doctors to pursue ever more and more ways to protect themselves. One of those ways is boatloads of money. Then, pile on the problems of escalating student loan costs and the fact that (in my opinion) we have more and more doctors entering healthcare for the money rather than for the people, and the problem becomes even more exacerbated.
we have to get away from this environment of distrust in order to create a healthcare system that works for everyone in the U.S., but I'm skeptical that it will ever happen. For example, education has always been this way; why would healthcare be any different? If you can afford it, you can get the good stuff, otherwise...
That's interesting, and I think it explains a lot. I think med school might be considerably cheaper in Canada. Then again, I just looked it up, so maybe not.
Also, most people who become doctors (at least things like GP, pediatrician, or any more general area covered by provincial health care) knows that he or she is going to be a government employee, and while they'll make decent money, it's not going to be enough to justify hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. So the motivation for doctors is different, maybe.
Also in Canada there's generally a lot less mistrust of government than in the US. People actually don't mind paying taxes, and in campaigns politicians can promise to raise taxes as long as there's some service that people thing will benefit either themselves or someone else in the community. But in the States the free market model is a lot more prominent, in both media and in people's minds, and I think the current health care...system is a natural product of that mentality.
And for the record, I have to say that the health care plans mentioned by the Democrats are just ridiculous. They're not proposing socialized health care, Canada or Europe-style. What they're proposing is government-subsidized private health-care, meaning it'll still be more expensive than the Canadian system, but now the tax payers will be paying for it. It's a combination of the worst parts of both systems - high costs and high taxes. What a bunch of clowns.
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