Chronic Condition Why Canada s Health Care System

Critical Book Review – Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century By: Navia Kumar Student ID#: 20571425 TA: Aisha Shibli Chronic Condition was an enthralling book to read. Most Canadians, myself included, take our health care system and how it came into existence for granted, so learning about the controversies and issues surrounding its creation are fascinating to learn about. This book went into great detail about the trials and tribulations that were faced in order to create the health care system that Canadians today have. Author Jeffery Simpson takes readers on the stimulating voyage of how Medicare came to be and the issues it has caused by analyzing the†¦show more content†¦Canadians often find a great source of pride in our health care system because it is â€Å"free†. When living next to a country that loudly boasts about its freedom and other such aspects, it is hard to stand out on a global level. That is why most citizens are misguided when they try to compare our health system to that of the United States. Indeed, if you look at the facts, we do have a better system but it is quite irrelevant to compare the two since we are both organized and financed differently. The United States spends more money on their system but does not reap the benefits that more money should offer. Often, the only gain from the comparison is a political one. The federal government’s as well as the provincial governments’ funding has lead to the provinces being too hospital heavy, meaning that there aren t enough low cost/more efficient facilities in existence such as long-term care facilities, which causes more patients to go to the hospital, which in turn causes more money to be spent than if the patient had been able to go elsewhere. Two key reasons why our health care system is so expensive are the cost of the drugs and the compensation that doctors receive. In order to keep up with the rising cost of our health care, Dalton McGuinty privatized services like physiotherapy and optometry and, â€Å"†¦Also froze the budgets of twelve departments other tha n health. There was the classic health-care spending trifecta: higher