Comparison of American and Canadian Health Care Plans.
Nations around the world strive to find the best healthcare plans. Canada and the United States, though very close in proximity, are opposite in their ideas of an effective healthcare plan. Since people are drastically growing in numbers, living longer and our technology improving, better health care is becoming a much more complicated task even for highly regarded nations such as America and Canada. .
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COMPARISON OF AMERICAN AND CANADIAN HEALTHCARE PLANS.
Most, when comparing the American Health Care system with that of Canada's, rate the Canadian system as superior to that of the United States. In reality, however, the two systems are not that easily compared. The demographics, political environment and even the geographic location of the two countries are entirely different. Both systems have their strong points and both have weak points as well.
Unfortunately health care in the United States is not free nor is it equally accessible by all. In fact, health care is one of the biggest industries in the United States. It generated an estimated one trillion dollars in revenues in 1995 (Ginzberg, 1994). Over the last five decades the cost of healthcare in this country has been rising at a not so regular rate. Between 1929 and 1940 the amount of spending per person grew approximately 1.4 percent per year (Ginzberg, 1994). The overall medical cost component of the Gross Domestic Product rose to four percent by the end of that same time period (Ginzberg, 1994). The rate of growth in health care cost increased to four percent per year after 1940 and by 1991 the medical cost component of the GDP was up to an amazing 13.4 percent (Ginzberg, 1994). By the first of the year (1993) the rise in annual health care cost was up to 6.4 percent and, although the figures for the percent of GDP were not available for 1993, the percent GDP for 1994 was 13.