Canadian confidence in health system falters
National Catholic Reporter

Canada, once the industrialized world's health Care poster child, is today more like a surly teenager.

Canadians remain healthier than Americans, and it doesn't cost them as much to stay that way. Total per capita Canadian health spending is only $3,000 a year in U.S. dollars, compared to $5,000-plus in the United States.

Even so, Canadians aren't deliriously happy with the health care they receive.

Hubert Gauthier, president and CEO of St. Boniface Hospital in St. Boniface, Manitoba, said patients in the United States "worry about how they'll pay for treatments" like a new hip. "In Canada they're worrying about how long they'll have to wait to get one." It could be six months or more.

Consequently Canada has recently been through a prolonged national dialogue related to the Romanov Report on its health care system's condition and its future shape.

Ask Gauthier how his country created Health Care Canada, its national health care service, and he cuts straight to its origins: "Go back a bit and it was the religious orders, they were the driving force. They were owners of the facilities, they were the public health system before we had a public health system." And they were in the forefront of the public push for health care for all.

Understandably, when government is the source of funding, government wants to run the entire operation. In a 1990s restructuring of the hospital systems nationwide, many institutions were closed or combined to avoid duplication. The Catholic presence has shrunk dramatically--though only in the same proportion as that of other religion-based or charitable providers.