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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

American conservatives love to bash Canadian health care — but U.S. corporations love it

President Donald Trump has been pushing hard, along with Republicans in Congress, to eliminate former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But as he and leaders of the Senate and House struggle to come up with some alternative health care law, they might ask themselves why large companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler (now Fiat Chrysler) over recent decades have shifted roughly half their car and truck production — and the jobs that go with them — across the Detroit River into Canada.

Here’s one big reason they did it: Canada’s government-run single-payer health system, known as Medicare — to be clear, not the same Medicare as the American health care system for senior citizens — lowers those auto companies’ health care costs from more than $15,000 per worker in the United States to just a few thousand dollars in Canada, with all Canadian taxpayers, not just employees and their employers, picking up the tab.

Read more at salon.com

Canadians know their healthcare isn’t perfect, but they would never trade their system for America’s

In my view, the major failure of President Obama and the Democrats in 2009 was that they did not frame or discuss health insurance reform as a human rights issue but rather got bogged down playing defense against Republican canards like socialism and death panels.

I’m a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. Canada’s single-payer system isn’t perfect, but I can say that the stress experienced by the cancer survivor in Lazarus’ column who had to file for bankruptcy would never have happened in Canada. While Canadians might complain from time to time, they would not trade their system for the one in the United States.

Read more at latimes.com

Trump campaign once again slams Canadian health care

The latest villain of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign: Canada’s health care system.

Trump’s Republican running mate, vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence, knocked the Canadian system during an appearance with Trump on Tuesday, following Trump’s inaccurate criticism in a radio interview last week.

Canada’s government insurance program has emerged as a late-campaign foil for the Trump campaign even though he has expressed strong support for it in the past. He has begun targeting Canada’s program as he has tried to turn public attention to problems with Obamacare, a much different program that involves government subsidies for insurance plans purchased from corporations.

Speaking in a hotel ballroom in an important suburb of Philadelphia, Pence, the governor of Indiana, falsely suggested that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is proposing a Canada-style “single-payer” system.

“She actually went to Canada and gave a speech that came out not too long ago,” he said. “She told Canadians and business groups that she wanted to get, and I’m quoting, ‘universal health care coverage like you have here in Canada.’ Well, we don’t want the socialized health care they have in Canada. We want American solutions.”

In that January 2015 speech, at Saskatoon’s Arts and Convention Centre, Clinton did not seem to be suggesting she wanted America to adopt Canada’s system. Rather, while defending Obamacare, she said she wanted all Americans insured.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/01/trump-campaign-once-again-slams-canadian-health-care.html

Why the U.S Still Trails Many Wealthy Nations in Access to Care

Many are still unhappy with Obamacare.

The main intent of the Affordable Care Act was to expand the safety net (Medicaid), regulate the non- employer-based private insurance market (the insurance exchanges) and help people buy that insurance (subsidies) in order to reduce the number of Americans who are uninsured.

On those metrics, it appears to be succeeding.

First and foremost, Obamacare was about improving access to healthcare. While it did improve access to insurance, in many, many other ways the United States is falling short. Things are likely to get worse before they get better.

Even with Obamacare, the Unites States still ranks poorly among comparable countries in insurance coverage. Even in 2016, when the rate of insured is the best it has ever been in the United States, Americans still have a greater percent of the population uninsured than pretty much any other industrialized nation in the world.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/25/upshot/why-the-us-still-trails-many-wealthy-nations-in-access-to-care.html?_r=0