Comparison of The Health Care Systems in Canada and The United States

Comparison of the health care systems in Canada and the United States are often made by government, public health and public policy analysts. The two countries had similar health care systems before Canada reformed its system in the 1960s and 1970s. The United States spends much more money on health care than Canada, on both a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP. In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in Canada was US$3,678; in the U.S., US$6,714. The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%. In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. Total government spending per capita in the U.S. on health care was 23% higher than Canadian government spending, and U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private) though these statistics don't take into account population differences.

Studies have come to different conclusions about the result of this disparity in spending. A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the US in a Canadian peer-reviewed medical journal found that "health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent." Life expectancy is longer in Canada, and its infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., but there is debate about the underlying causes of these differences.

One commonly cited comparison, the 2000 World Health Organization's ratings of "overall health service performance", which used a "composite measure of achievement in the level of health, the distribution of health, the level of responsiveness and fairness of financial contribution", ranked Canada 30th and the US 37th among 191 member nations. This study rated the US "responsiveness", or quality of service for individuals receiving treatment, as 1st, compared with 7th for Canada. While the average life expectancy for Canadians was 80.34 years compared with 78.6 years for residents of the US, simply comparing the life expectancy of two groups with different racial makeup and different obesity rates is likely not an effective way of determining which healthcare system is superior.

The WHO's study methods were criticized by some analyses. Although there is a measure of consensus that life-expectancy and infant mortality mark the most reliable ways to compare nation-wide health care, assuming the population makeup is similar, a recent report by the Congressional Research Service carefully summarizes some recent data and notes the "difficult research issues" facing international comparisons.