Universal Health Care: Take That Harpocrats!

Well, that graph by itself should go a long way towards answering the “received wisdom” from Canada’s right wing that “health care is broken”. And, it should also go a long way in helping the US left in justifying universal health care.

The graph comes from a fairly detailed article on the results of a study into our more than 35-year old experiment with universal health care, “Has Canada Got the Cure?”

There’s a lot of interesting information in there, but I think this paragraph is the one that make me the most proud of our system:

Historically, one of the cruelest aspects of unequal income distribution is that poor people not only experience material want all their lives, they also suffer more illness and die younger. But in Canada there is no association between income inequality and mortality rates—none whatsoever.

Now, I can see how that paragraph might make the extremely well-off nervous, but I think it’s glorious. I know I’m a bit of a small-l liberal, even for Canada, but I really do think everyone should have access to quality health care–especially as children.

I note also that on the scale of history, it didn’t take long to get to this point:

What makes this study so interesting is that Canada used to have statistics that mirrored those in the United States. In 1970, U.S. and Canadian mortality rates calculated along income lines were virtually identical. But 1970 also marked the introduction of Medicare in Canada — universal, singlepayer coverage. The simple explanation for how Canadians have all become equally healthy, regardless of income, most likely lies in the fact that they have a publicly funded, single-payer health system and the control group, the United States, does not.

I also want to highlight one other paragraph, just for Will:

But now that the United States has begun to do studies based on income levels instead of race, these “cultural” and genetic explanations are turning out to be baseless. Infant mortality is highest among the poor, regardless of race.