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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (453450)	9/5/2003 4:37:31 PM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Canada-U.S. gap in health grows Costs three times more south of border By BRIAN LAGHI UPDATED AT 4:30 PM EDT OTTAWA -- The overhead cost of operating the United States health-care system is more than three times that of running Canada's, and the gap is getting bigger, new research says. The study, to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, puts the administrative cost of the U.S. system at $294-billion (U.S.) per year, compared to about $9.4-billion in Canada. That translates to a per-person cost of $1,059 in the U.S. and $307 in Canada. The study, whose lead author is Dr. Steffi Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School, indicates that Americans spend more on administrative costs because of its many private companies from whom they buy their insurance. The companies increase paperwork by creating multiple claims-processing offices, while Canadian doctors send their claims to a single insurer, the government. Private insurers also spend money on marketing and underwriting, costs that the Canadian system doesn't have to bear. However, the same issue of the journal says that the authors may be overestimating the gap between the two nations. Editorial writer Dr. Henry Aaron, an economist with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the authors have overestimated the cost of the U.S. system by about $50-billion. Not all the reports in the journal about Canada had such a rosy outlook. A paper produced by two prominent Toronto doctors argues that the recent health accord signed by Canada's first ministers will not be the panacea many think it to be. "The Health Accord represents a welcome reinfusion of previously withdrawn federal funds and contains many useful reform initiatives," says the study, authored by C. David Naylor, dean of medicine at the University of Toronto, and Allen Detsky, chief of internal medicine at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. "However, we also believe that the latest federal-provincial agreement is best interpreted as yet another temporizing compromise." The authors argue, for example, that the plan to reform family doctors' offices to add multidisciplinary teams will be very difficult to achieve because such a change requires a negotiated settlement and can't be imposed. The accord also calls for reasonable access to catastrophic drug coverage, a requirement that can be interpreted in different ways. Yesterday, a spokesman for Alberta Premier Ralph Klein reiterated the Premier's pledge not to join the proposed Canadian Health Council. "As it stands right now, they'll be doing it without Alberta," said Gordon Turtle. "It's not something we would push because we don't see any need for it." Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has said that the government is ready to announce the establishment of the council. The council has been a source of controversy since it was agreed to at a first ministers meeting earlier this year.