Standards of Evaluation

Standards of Evaluation

In the following we will compare and contrast the standards of evaluation of the US health care delivery system and the Canadian health care delivery system in the following four areas; access, cost, quality and continuity.

First, what is the definition of access? According to the former President George W. Bush, "people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. The question is, will we be wise about how we pay for health care. I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care.”(1) Government controlled health care, single-payer insurance, is exactly what Canada has right now, but both countries still have problems with access to health care. “Studies suggest that 40% of US citizens and 5% of Canadian citizens lack adequate access to health care.”(1) The only difference between the two countries is the amounts of people that have don’t have access. Saying that everybody has access to an emergency room here in America does not mean that they have true access to health care and the same goes for Canada with their single-payer insurance system. Access has been defined as the timely use of needed, affordable, convenient, acceptable, and effective personal health services. (Shi and Singh, 2005) Besides the raw numbers involved in these differences, the definition of “access” is the true difference. The 40% of US citizens represents the total number of people who are uninsured or under insured, whereas the 5% of Canadian citizens represents the number of people who “cannot find” or “haven’t looked” for a regular doctor. The definition itself does not distinguish between those with insurance or those without. Bottom line is that both...