It’s been decades since Canada transitioned from a U.S.-style system of private healthcare insurance to a government-run single-payer system.
To be sure, wait times for specialist care and some diagnostic imaging are often criticized as too long.
But a 2007 study by Canada’s health authority and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the overall health of Americans and Canadians to be roughly similar.
The cost of administering this system amounts to 17% of Canada’s national expenditures on health.
“Discussions of health reform in the United States should consider whether $812 billion devoted annually to health administration is money well spent.”.
But in states that shifted most of their Medicaid recipients into private managed care, administrative costs were twice as high.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, a group representing private health insurance companies, said administrative practices shouldn’t be blamed for escalating the cost of care in the United States. »
