While it's certainly a good thing that free and universal health care is a sacred cow of the canadian electorate, it's important to remember that this is also a relatively recent development. The Canada Health Act, which implemented universal health care, was a bitterly contested piece of legislation, and its predecessor in Saskatchewan sparked a full-scale physicians' strike which went on for weeks.
While Canada may be a mystery to many americans (witness the This Hour Has 22 Minutes "Talking to Americans" segment), I doubt that anyone who's really interested in health care economics is totally ignorant of this chain of events. Any implementation of universal health care has to be done with the consent of physicians, and physicians prefer the private system, of whom they are the primary beneficiaries. Public opinion is important but secondary.
Perhaps things will be different after HMOs become firmly entrenched and start to exert a downward pressure on fees. I can see the federal government forming a HMO-like agency and gradually expanding its responsibilities. This would avoid the strife which comes with an all-or-nothing solution, in my lay opinion.
Marco
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> Marco Anglesio | Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, <
> mpa at the-wire.com | strychnine are weak dilutions. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | The surest poison is time. <
> | --Ralph Waldo Emerson <
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