By Ellen Wedum
In 2005, Toyota chose to locate its RAV4 assembly plant in Ontario, Canada. One of the major selling points was Canada’s national health insurance system, which saves the auto manufacturer large sums in benefit payments compared with costs in the United States.
The United States spends 15-17 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, which provides a mishmash of coverage for only 85 percent of Americans. For France and Germany, that drops to around 11 percent to cover everyone. Canada and Sweden pay roughly 10 percent and 9 percent of GDP respectively for a basic national health care program for all.
Now let’s compare the results for just two statistics, infant deaths per thousand births and life expectancy.
For infant deaths, the United States is the worst, at 6.4 per thousand births. France is at 4.2, Germany is at 4.1, Canada is at 4.6 and Sweden is at 2.8. For life expectancy, the average American lifespan is the shortest, at 78.0 years. France is at 79.9, Germany is at 79.0, Canada is at 80.3 and Sweden is at 80.6. (Click here to see the comparison.)
Wow. We pay the most and get the worst health care. For Toyota, that would have meant higher benefit expenses and, overall, a less healthy, less productive work force.
The Canadian system
France, Germany, Canada and Sweden have government-provided national health care programs that guarantee every citizen basic health insurance. And if their governments can do it for less, I believe our government can too. I’m going to give some details of the system in Canada, just because I have read more about it than the others and because it is the country closest to ours.
The Canadian national health care system is funded by taxes but is administered by the individual province or territory. It is a basic insurance plan, with just one set of rules for reimbursements, not the thousands of different sets of rules (the health insurance industry, the HMOs, the military coverage, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.) that the United States has.
Contrary to the lies about “socialized medicine” being spread by right-wing commentators, Canadian doctors are independent contractors. Canadian citizens are free to buy additional health insurance if they choose.
Doctors in Canada do make less than United States doctors. But they have lower overhead. For example, they don’t have to pay a full-time staffer to deal with over 100 different insurers, all of whom are determined to deny care whenever possible. In Canada the system is set up to deliver health care instead of profits, and medical access is considered a right. In the United States, the health insurance industry calls delivering health care a “medical loss.”
‘You do what’s right’
If you watched the Senate hearings on health care, you heard the representative for the business roundtable tell the Senate committee that American companies cannot compete with foreign companies that have national health insurance because American companies must provide that health insurance for their employees at considerable cost to the bottom line.
The Canadians have had their “single payer” national health insurance since the 1960s. Sara Robinson writes, “Canadians tend to think of tending to one’s health as one of your duties as a citizen. You do what’s right because you don’t want to take up space in the system, or put that burden on your fellow taxpayers.”
In the last 60 years in the United States, the emphasis has been on deregulation, the “free” market, and Greed is God. Can Americans switch from a “me-first” philosophy to one of feeling a personal responsibility for the general welfare?
Bottom line #1: A few years ago, a TV show asked Canadians to name the greatest Canadian in history; and in a broad national consensus, they gave the honor to Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan premier who is considered the father of the country’s health care system.
Bottom line #2: If you are one of the approximately 180 million Americans who is paying monthly premiums for private health insurance, keep in mind that a quarter to a third of your premium goes to pay million-dollar salaries to the company’s CEOs, plus political donations of $1.8 million (in 2008 alone) to Senator Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, plus the hiring of all those lobbyists who are telling congress that America doesn’t need national health insurance.
So please contact your congressional delegation and let them know you want a national health care option similar to the Canadian system. A toll-free number for reaching the Capitol switchboard is 800-828-0498.
Wedum, a Democrat, is running for the New Mexico House District 59 seat next year.