Frozen North: Controlling Physician Costs through Controlling Fees - The Canadian Experience

摘要

Canada is commonly described, particularly by external observers, as having a national health insurance system. Like all generalizations, however, the characterization is false, or at least misleading. The distinctively Canadian form of financing for health care is more accurately described as a federal-provincial system of public reimbursement for the costs of hospital and medical care. (It is sometimes less accurately described as 'socialized medicine', an expression which has long since ceased to have any meaning, if it ever did, other than as a disapproving noise). The Canadian system succeeds in providing universal and comprehensive coverage against the costs of hospital and medical care, to the whole population, at a cost which is substantially lower than that in most other developed countries and in particular much lower than that in the United States.