Our system of Universal public insurance for health care is by a considerable magin Canada's most successful and popular puiblic program. Our system works, and compared to most other systems works well, while the American alternative does not.

Medicare still enjoys broad support, but Canadians have become increasingly concerned that care will not be available for them when they need it. A substantial in Public opinion is a potent catalyst for change. These widespread concerns have already led to large increases in public funding for...

Control of health care costs is often portrayed as a struggle between external, "natural" forces pushing costs up and individuals, groups, and societies trying to resists the inevitable.

While concerns over escalation in health care costs are virtually universal in the industrialized world, the forms of policy response, and their relative success, have been quite variable.

Canadians are justifiably proud of Medicare. All (but one) of the major industrialized countries have established universal public payment systems for health care, and most are similarly proud, or at least highly supportive, of them. National systems differ in important details but in broad...

In this paper we review and extend an earlier, in-depth analysis of the effects of users ccharges. The present paper assesses whether experience and published literature in the years since 1979 alter any of the (largely negative) conclusions of the earlier study concerning the ability of direct...

The year 1981 appears, in retrospect, to have been something of a turning point in the evolution of the Canadian health care system. It was not obvious at the time -- the year did not, 1961 or 1971, mark the completion of a clearly defined stage of public coverage or, like 1978, a major shift in...

In this paper we examine some of the most frequently heard arguments for user charges and look at what evidence there is for claims and counter-claims that are often made.

Our system of universal public insurance for health care is by a considerable margin Canada's must successful and popular public program. We think of it, not just as an administrative mechanism for paying medical bills, but as an important symbol of community, a concrete representation of mutual...

Illness increases with age. All else being equal, an older population has greater needs for health care. This logic has led to dire protections of skyrocketing costs - apocalyptic demography. Yet numerous studies have shown tha aging effects are relatively small, and all else is not equal. Cost...