Should Low-Cost Health Care be Our Ultimate Goal?

It’s true that in the United States, health care costs are higher – for example in the U.S. the cost is 16 percent of GDP while in Canada it is 9 percent. But the Canadian government sets a global budget on what the state can afford. As a result, Canadians wait in long lines for rationed care, and have poor access to the newest medicines and latest innovations. About 10 percent of Canadians are waiting to get a primary care doctor – 3.2 million out of a population of 32 million. Moreover, the average wait in 2007 from seeing a primary doctor to getting treatment by a specialist in Canada is 18.3 weeks, up from 17.9 weeks in 2006.

Wouldn’t it be better to try to provide as much access as possible to the best of health care, even at higher costs? This is the model in the U.S., where more people have access to the latest technologies, but of course, this naturally means higher costs. The “appropriate” spending on health care should be decided by individuals and the marketplace and not by government bureaucrats.  Our ultimate goal should not be to keep costs down, but to provide access to the highest quality health care for as many people as possible.