A Rebuttal to Mr. Anonymous on Healthcare

We appreciate you reading our blog and your opinion on the subject, but while reading the link you posted I’ve found some mistakes you’ve made in your assessment of the article.

You made the comment based on your interpretation of the article, “The Canadian healthcare systems outperform the US system almost across the board according to basically every large scale study ever conducted.” This statement is a direct contradiction to what the author’s state when discussing their findings.

When the article clearly states in its discussion:

“In this systematic review, we demonstrated that although Canadian outcomes were more often superior to US outcomes than the reverse, neither the United States nor Canada can claim hegemony in terms of quality of medical care and the resultant patient-important outcomes.”

You’ve also made the statement that Canada is outperforming the United States (which is clearly a statement that can’t be made since it’s been disproved above) at just over half the cost. The article states “Canada’s single-payer system, which relies on not-for-profit delivery, achieves health outcomes that are at least equal to those in the United States at two-thirds the cost.” The difference between ½ the cost and 2/3 the cost isn’t the problem I have with the statement, the problem is you assume the cost is lower because of socialized medicine. When in reality you’ve failed to take into account that the United States subsidizes the entire WORLD’s research and development when it comes to healthcare. Of course their costs are going to be less; they don’t have to pay for the research, our healthcare costs so much because it’s operated as a BUSINESS, and businesses have to take into account research and development when pricing a product. When a country doesn’t have to take that into account then their profit margins grow for the product, therefore they can lower the cost for the buyer without sacrificing the quality of the product.