The Canadian Health Care System

Health care in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded health care system, meaning that the financing of the system is designed to meet the cost of all or most of the health care needs from a publicly managed fund. Health care in Canada is funded at both the provincial and federal levels. The financing of health care is provided through taxation from personal and corporate income taxes. Some provinces also use sources such as sales tax and lottery proceeds (Allin).

The Canadian health care system was built on the principle that all citizens will receive all medically necessary and hospital physician services. This is something that Canadians generally take great pride in and tote as success of their republic. Each of Canada’s ten provinces

With Canada spending an overwhelmingly large amount on a per-capita basis, they scored significantly worse in many aspects of providing quality care. Another unintended consequence of the health care system in Canada is that health care decision making is politicized (Irvine) because the government has nearly all decision making power around health care. This means that health care decisions may not be a product of deliberation of what would be the best for the people as a whole but what decisions may fulfill some political agenda or promise. Because the powers over these systems are not centralized (Irvine), it is a system that is difficult to navigate and gain a meaningful or useful understanding of if you are an average person looking to understand why some territories have more efficient systems or a higher qualities of

Due to the waiting times and issues of access in the Canadian healthcare system, people have been reported in saying that they are willing to pay out of pocket for a system that would be more efficient (Irvine). Sadly, with laws that inhibit and in some areas prohibit this market in Canada, people are not going to be able to find market based solutions to the problem on access to health care in Canada.

Publically managed and government funded health care programs that include little to no fees for the general public are very attractive in theory (Irvine) but it seems, in Canada’s case, this can lead to issues of access and quality which would make people argue that systems that provide vouchers or subsidies for health care are more efficient and market