health insurance choices

The Democrats want to establish a Canada-style single-payer health care system.

Before Congress passes Canadian-style health care, they should ask Canadians about life under a single-payer system.

A Commonwealth Fund study found that 33% of Canadian seniors aren’t satisfied with the waiting times and care they receive.

They have to wait months for care. In Nova Scotia, elderly patients wait more than 600 days for a hip replacement and more than 700 days for a knee replacement. Patients in Manitoba seeking cataract removal wait more than 12 weeks for an appointment and 41 weeks for surgery.

Canadian doctors agree their system is ill-equipped to care for seniors.

More than 75% of Canadians believe patients on waiting lists longer than recommended should be able to pay for private treatment but Canadian law prohibits it.

Wait times will worsen as the share of seniors grows. By 2024, more than one in five Canadians will be 65 or older.

United States seniors will be more than 20% of the population by 2030. And our system does better than Canada’s.

American seniors are most satisfied with healthcare programs that are based on private competition. Medicare Advantage, for instance, offers seniors a choice of private plans. In one survey, 88% of Medicare Advantage participants were satisfied with their coverage. Medicare Part D, which enables seniors to purchase subsidized prescription drug coverage from a range of private providers, enjoys similarly high approval ratings.

There are many things the United States can do to improve care for older patients. Mimicking Canada isn’t one of them.

Sally Pipes is a Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute.