QUESTION:

Consider the Canadian healthcare system. What occurs when everyone has health insurance and access to care?

BACKGROUND:

The Canadian Health Care System:

Each developed country in the world has taken its own approach to establish a healthcare system. Examining these differences provides insightful ideas into how healthcare reform can be structured and financed. We first examine the system of one of our neighbors. Canada is the second largest country in the world by landmass and has 10 provinces and two territories. Most of its population of 34.5 million live within 100 miles of its southern border with the United States (Henderson 2015). Its large geographic size and concentration of population in the southern portion of the country cause challenges to delivering health care. Canada developed a national health insurance system to meet these challenges, in particular challenges associated with delivering care to a geographically dispersed rural population. National health insurance is a government-run health insurance system covering the entire population with a well-defined set of medical benefits (Henderson 2015). The insurance benefits are typically administered by a government or government-affiliated agency and financed through taxation.