[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by opendoor

The two biggest things are:

1) Lower public funding; Germany spends 45% more public money on healthcare per capita and most of the better European systems spend 10-30% more.

Do you have the source for that? All of the sources I have show Canada spending as much or more per capita on health care as northern European countries, but they don’t break down the private vs public.

While you and I might support increased taxes to boost health care spending, most Canadians don’t. Certainly not the 20-25 sales tax and across-the-board higher income taxes which European countries can rely on. No Canadian politicians who want to get elected are proposing anything along those lines - even the NDP in Alberta vow they wouldn’t impose a PST.

Which means increased health care spending is coming from two sources: diversion from the other big budget item of education, and higher public deficits. The latter has been particularly attractive for the last couple decades. But with higher interest rates here to stay, we can’t rely on ever-growing deficits anymore. So we can expect health care budgets to continue to consume other public spending priorities - especially education.

Originally Posted by opendoor

2) Higher staff costs due to competition with the US. The average doctor or nurse's salary in Canada is about 20-30% higher than in France, the UK, etc. And the countries where healthcare professionals are paid at a similar level to Canada (Germany is one example), the overall funding is significantly higher to compensate.

I’ve found when I point out that Canadian doctors and nurses are among the highest-paid in the developed world, people tend to lose their ####. I’ll bookmark this comment for the future.

Originally Posted by opendoor

And the proof is in the numbers; most of the good European systems have 3.5-5 doctors per 1,000 people; we have 2.8. That's not a public vs private thing, or an efficiency thing, that's just fewer doctors. If we had 30-60% more doctors per capita, most of the issues we have with wait times and access would disappear.

Our expensive and lengthy training plays a part there. Canadian and American doctors are required to have two four-year degrees, while European countries require a single 5 or 6-year degree to practice medicine. Whether that excessive training is due to tuition-hungry universities, or professional bodies trying to keep the number of practitioners low, it should be addressed as part of health care reforms.

Originally Posted by opendoor

But introducing private health care without increasing the health resources in the country will do nothing except reduce the average person's healthcare quality.

But we can see from the U.S. that private health care does increase the health resources in a country. The U.S. has more doctors per capita, more hospitals beds, and shorter wait times than Canada. Those assets are distributed unevenly, but the average American typically has better access to care than the average Canadian - it’s the poorest third of Americans who get worse care. Basically, Americans collectively spend more on health care than Canadians and get better care.

I’m not advocating for Canada adopting that system, just pointing out that private dollars can increase capacity. As you noted yourself, Canada has to pay high salaries to medical professionals in order to compete with the U.S., because the big dollars in the system down there attracts resources (ie labour).