A new cross-border analysis shows that Canadians experience more difficulties accessing healthcare and feel less confident in the system than do Americans.
"We've always had this hubris here that no matter what befalls Canadians, we're always going to be better off than our friends in the US," ARI Chair Angus Reid, PhD, told."But the reality is, a great number of Canadians have serious difficulty, and in some cases, impossibility, of getting care. So, I decided that we would do parallel surveys.
72% said they know at least one close friend or family member who received inadequate medical care in the past 6 months. Canadians older than 34 were much more likely to report an extended ― and fruitless ― search for a doctor; 43% looked for more than a year, and 30% of those older than 54 said they had given up, despite being of an age at which one is"As you can imagine, there are some people in Canada that are very upset with our results, but that's the reality," Reid said.
"We found that 50% of Canadians are dead set against privatization, 35% feel we need to move in that direction, and 15% are in the middle," he noted."So, this is going to be a big debate in the country. And it's not just privatization but also the ability of private insurers to provide services here, which they're currently not able to do."