Health: Canadian Health Care the Term Paper

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In 2004, a Ten-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care was announced, primarily intended to improve access to medical services, decrease wait times, and update medical equipment and ensure accurate reporting and enhance public health promotion and prevention programs. Shortly thereafter, the Canadian Supreme Court affirmed the nation's health care philosophy and the immediate need to implement further improvements envisioned by the ambitious 2004 plan in striking down a Quebec law that had prohibited private medical insurance for covered services:

The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread and that in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care...In sum, the prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services."

According to legal experts, the decision could "open the door to a wave of lawsuits challenging the health care system in other provinces" as a result. (New York Times, 2005).

Medicare Service Delivery:

Delivery of free universal medical care through Canadian Medicare is provided by health care plans administrated by the thirteen municipal governments of ten provinces and three territories. The federal government establishes a set of five specific criteria that must be met by provincial and territorial health care plans to qualify for their full share of federal funding. Pursuant to the requirements of the Canadian Health Act, those criteria are:

Comprehensiveness,

Universality,

Portability,

Accessibility, and Public Administration

Health care services are administered through a three-tiered system of primary services, secondary services, and supplementary services. Primary services are furnished by teams of medical practitioners, including physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, therapists, and pharmacists. In addition to being the actual first point-of-contact medical services, primary care also includes the overall coordination of patients' long-term medical care and ensuring the smooth transition among multiple stages of treatments and therapy (Madore, 2003).

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Where necessary, primary care providers refer patients to hospitals and long-term care facilities for more specialized medical services. Alternatively, patients may receive secondary care at various short- and long-term community institutions. Whereas the federal government funds primary care and hospital services, secondary services delivered at other facilities or in the home are financed primarily by the territories and provinces.

Supplemental health care services include vision care, dental treatments, pharmaceuticals, and the actual costs of medical equipment such as ambulatory aides, prosthetics, and monitoring devices. They are not covered by the Canadian Health Act, except in the case of senior citizens, children, and individuals who qualify for social assistance programs. Generally, Canadians pay for these directly, through privately purchased medical insurance policies or group policies maintained by their employers.

Conclusion:

By the generally accepted standards measuring national health levels, Canadian citizens are healthier than their American counterparts. Life expectancy in Canada is among the highest among modern industrialized countries (Madore, 2003). To a large degree, this is attributable to free universal health care and the consolidation of health- related municipal services such as waste management, sanitation, and medical education within an overall approach designed to promote healthful practices and prevent disease on a national basis.

The Canadian health care system presents a model of government-funded socialized medicine that may eventually be mirrored in the United States. Currently, Social Security and Medicare programs in the United States are widely acknowledged to be unsustainable beyond the next generation, if not sooner. The United States ranks disproportionately low with respect to its wealth in comparison to many countries, primarily by virtue of their government-funded universal health care programs. In all likelihood, one need look no farther than across our nearest border for a solution......

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