The Canadian health care revolution

[yortsed snacilbuper]

SASKATOON,Saskatchewan — Consistent with the modest character of this province at the center of a country that revels in modesty, a modest commemorative sits in front of a modest two-story home. Right here, at 814 Saskatchewan Crescent in the Nutana residential neighborhood of Saskatoon, rests a small historical plaque that for months of the year is covered by snow — but that tells a story that transformed Saskatchewan in the early 1960s, spread to the other nine provinces of Canada by 1970 and, in the past decade, reached across the 49th parallel to Barack Obama’s America.

It is the story of universally accessible public medical insurance, and the irony is that its beginning in this peaceable kingdom was marked by anger, resentment, protests and a 23-day doctors’ strike that affected 79 hospitals and imperiled the health of hundreds of thousands of people. And it was in this tiny house that Dr. Samuel Wolfe planned a remarkable medical airlift that imported doctors from Great Britain into this prairie province — a desperate but effective gambit that helped bring an end to the doctors’ strike and assure the future of government health insurance.

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[Dragonfli]

1. Can't wait for the revolution to spread here, the private insurance vultures control

of our system led to the death of my wife, public medical insurance would save lives and reduce greatly the cost to care ratio.

Rec in hope for a future where we have a system like Canada's.

[Doctor_J]

2. not in any current Americans lifetime

The heritage foundation and Obama took care of that.

[RealityAdvocate]

3. Medicare for all.

[Doctor_J]

4. This must be from the onion

Single payer healthcare has not reached into Barack Obama's America. We took a giant step away from it, in fact. These constant propaganda pieces about how great heritage care is are predictable and extremely damaging to actual reform

[moondust]

5. Alternate history.

President Jimmy Carter won re-election over actor and Ayatollah partner Ronald Reagan in 1980 despite a close race. One of his first acts in the new term was to work with a Democratic majority in Congress to pass Medicare-For-All health care legislation extending the ideas of the New Deal and the Great Society. Through the years this has resulted in millions of American lives saved and greatly improved thanks to universal access to an affordable U.S. health care system.

The revolution that didn't happen.

[Jim Lane]

6. Does anyone know how Saskatchewan handled the "reverse cherry-picking" issue?

Private, for-profit health insurance companies before ACA engaged in cherry-picking -- notably by refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Each company wanted its pool of insureds to be as healthy as possible, to maximize its profits.

I've wondered about single payer in one province or one state. The danger would be that people elsewhere in the country who receive, say, a diagnosis of cancer, and with it a recommendation for expense treatment, will, if they have the flexibility, move to the place where they can get free health care. That one state or province would then have a risk pool that was markedly skewed toward the unhealthy, leading to much higher costs.

Did Saskatchewan encounter this, after it adopted its plan and before other provinces did so? Has Vermont given any consideration to the issue in its contemplation of one-state single payer?