Canada Single-Payer Healthcare Is Unsafe, Grossly Inefficient

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first provincial single-payer health insurance plan in Canada — and the 50th anniversary of the extension of single-payer across our northern neighbor.

And yet, across the border in the United States, Medicare for All seems like a progressive pipe dream. What gives? Or, as progressive activist Ralph Nader recently asked, why aren't there "regular marches on Washington to pass Medicare-for-All?"

A quick look at the state of Canada's single-payer healthcare system reveals the answer. Life-threatening treatment delays and subpar care are a part of daily life in a way that would seem unthinkable to patients in the United States.

Indeed, many Canadians today probably wish their ancestors hadn't embraced government-run health insurance decades ago.

That's one way to interpret the findings of a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute. Just 39% of Canadians hold a positive opinion of their health system, compared to three-quarters of Americans.

These attitudes are easy to understand, given the immense barriers Canadian patients face when seeking care. More than 6 in 10 doubt they could access timely care in the event of an emergency.

In some parts of Canada, emergency room wait times are at record highs. It's sadly common to read horror stories in the Canadian press about patients languishing on gurneys for days in ER hallways before being admitted to the hospital or feverish young children being turned away.

One Ontario cancer patient reported waiting 10 hours for care on each of his three recent trips to Victoria Hospital's emergency room.

Such harrowing experiences are hardly isolated incidents. More than half of Canadians report that someone close to them has suffered health consequences as a result of waiting for care.

The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think tank, reports that the median wait for receipt of treatment from a specialist following referral by a general practitioner is more than 25 weeks.

The president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Alika Lafontaine, recently described the severity of the nation's healthcare crisis. "We've been saying for a while that we're concerned about collapse," he said. "And in some places, collapse has already happened."

What's to account for this collapse? The one preferred by many public officials and defenders of the status quo is a lack of resources. If only the government devoted more money to propping up the system, Canadian healthcare wouldn't be such a shambles.

But Canadians already pay dearly for their healthcare system. The Fraser Institute estimates that a typical two-parent, two-child family pays $15,847 Canadian, or US $11,575, in taxes just for publicly provisioned health coverage.

That's an enormous price to pay for a health system that routinely denies necessary care to patients.

Despite having a single-payer system, Canadians cover nearly 15% of their healthcare expenses out of pocket. That's actually a greater share than Americans spend out of pocket on health care.

And Canada may struggle to wrest more tax dollars out of its citizens to fund healthcare. Its tax-to-GDP ratio was 34.4% in 2020. That's higher than the average among the developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

That leaves the strategy that Canada has adopted, perhaps by default: waits, rationing, and poor-quality care.

The real mystery isn't why Americans haven't followed Canada down the road to single-payer. It's why Canadians haven't marched on Ottawa to end their cruel government-run health system before it ruins more lives.