The healthcare system of Canada belongs to the world’s best-developed and most effective. Due to it, the patients have equal access to medical assistance and live long; in addition, it continues improving to adapt to their needs. Although one would argue that the system has particular disadvantages, the statistics show that it performs at a sufficiently high level to protect and maintain the health of the population.
The main drawback presumably is waiting durably for elective care. However, as Martin et al. (2018) highlight, this emerges from the underlying postulate of equality. The key determinant of access to medical assistance in Canada is need, regardless of the patient’s ability to pay. This leads naturally to queuing, as it is impossible to provide the necessary procedures to everybody at once, but common affordability outbalances the time limitations.
In one respect, waiting for medical assistance, including surgery, hypothetically threatens life expectancy. Thus, Sutherland et al. (2016) describe anxieties, depressions, and pain-related problems as the results of such situations that can exhaust the patients. In fact, however, Canadians live longer than the population of other developed countries. Around 2005, their average lifetime equaled 79 years, exceeding 76 in the USA and approximately 77 in Western Europe (Mackenbach, 2013, pp. 137-138; Montez et al., 2020, p. 673; Storch, 2005, p. 417). Since then, Canada has remained one of the leaders, while the upward trends in the other locations have been unstable.
One would also mention the relatively large neonatal mortality percentage in Canada as a drawback of the healthcare system. Thus, in 2012, it amounted to 3.9 per 1000 births, while in developed European countries, this parameter varied from 2.0 in Luxemburg to 3.8 in Denmark (Joseph et al., 2012, p. 16). Nevertheless, in some other states, the situation was worse, including the USA, with 4.5 neonatal deaths per 1000 births. In addition, Storch (2005) notes that Canadian rates had equaled 5.6 seven years earlier; the downward trend is apparent (p. 417). This illustrates the progress in the minimization of neonatal mortality.
To summarize, the quantitative data show the effectiveness of the Canadian healthcare system. Thus, the life expectancy in the country slightly exceeds both American and average European, which proves that the local medical professionals protect the health of the population successfully. The reduction in neonatal mortality rates is another factor to consider; it demonstrates that the medical industry in the country continues to develop and consequently grow more effectively.
References
Joseph, K. S., Liu, Sh., Rouleau, J., Lisonkova, S., Hutcheon, J. A., Sauve, R., Allen, A. C., & Kramer, M. S. (2012). Influence of definition based versus pragmatic birth registration on international comparisons of perinatal and infant mortality: population based retrospective study. The BMJ, 17(344), 16-17. Web.
Mackenbach, J. P. (2013). Political conditions and life expectancy in Europe, 1900-2008. Social Science & Medicine, 82, 134-146. Web.
Martin, D., Miller, A. P., Quesnel-Vallee, A., Caron, N. R., Vissandjee, B., & Marchildon, G. P. (2018). Canada’s universal health-care system: achieving its potential. Lancet, 391(10131), 1718-1735. Web.
Montez, J. K., Beckfield, J., Cooney, J. K., Grumbach, J. M., Hayward, M. D., Koytak, H. Z., Woolf, S. H., & Zajasova, A. (2020). US state policies, politics, and life expectancy. The Milbank Quarterly, 98(3), 668-699.
Storch, J. (2005). Country Profile: Canada’s health care system. PubMed, 12(4), 414-418. Web.
Sutherland, J., Chan, A., Liu, G., Yue, E., Bair, M., & Crump, R. (2016). Health of patients on the waiting list: Opportunity to improve health in Canada? Elsevier, 120(7), 749-757. Web.