This shortage of equipment affects wait time for diagnostic tests, which in some provinces can run well over three months (Beaudan, 2002). According to Michael Decter, chair of the national board of Canadian Institute for Health Information, the Canadian health care system is dazed but he still believes that modernized public healthcare is the answer. "We do well on life expectancy and immunization of children compared to the U.S.," he says, noting that the United States spends 40% more on healthcare than Canada does (Beaudan, 2002).

Americans who go to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at how Canada offers free and first class medical care to everyone. But hospital administrators will tell a different story about having to cut staff for lack of funds or about having to tell a mother that their teenager would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament. The average Canadian family pays about 48% in income taxes each year part of which goes to fund the healthcare system. Rates vary from province to province throughout Canada, but Ontario, one of the most populated provinces, spends nearly 40% of every tax dollar on healthcare. The federal government along with almost all of the provinces acknowledges that there is a crisis in the Canada healthcare system. There is a lack of physicians and nurses, a lack of state-of-the-art equipment and a lack of funding (Duff-Brown, 2005).

The differences between the U.S. healthcare system and the Canadian healthcare system are numerous. The U.S. system is private based and the Canadian system is government...

Both systems have their advantages, but they both have their problems as well. One advantage to having a public healthcare system is that healthcare is provided to everyone, unlike in a private system in which those without health insurance often go without care, because they can't afford it. The problem with everyone having access to health care is that there are not enough providers to care for everyone which makes the wait for services sometimes unbearable.
I think that both types of systems have good points and bad. The answer to good health care is to develop a system that takes the best of both of these worlds and make it into one. This way everyone would have access to much needed medical care and in a timely fashion. It would also mean that health care could focus on prevention and not solely on curing those that are ill. In the end everyone from the providers to the patients would benefit.

Works Cited

Beaudan, Eric. "Canadian model of healthcare ails." Christian Science Monitor. 28 Aug. 2002: 1.

David, Guy. "The Convergence between for-Profit and Nonprofit Hospitals in the United

States." (2005). The Wharton School of Business University of Pennsylvania. 13 April 2009

http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2006/0106_0800_0204.pdf

Duff-Brown, Beth. "Canada's Healthcare, Free, First-Class, and Often Slow." The Miami Herald

(FL). 20 March 2005: A29.

Honore, Russell L. "Poor health care a threat to U.S. security." Times-Picayune, the (New

Orleans, LA). 24…