Sicko makes Canada feel good about itself.
Some interesting insights:
“For this dysfunctional system, the United States spends more than any other country in the world, about $2 trillion a year.”
“Even though that sum represents about 14 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic product, 44 million U.S. residents are uninsured, and as Moore shows, even those who are insured have difficulty getting care. In Canada, he points out, nine per cent of our GDP is enough (or almost enough) to provide health care to 100 per cent of the population.”
“In a systematic review of 38 studies published in Open Medicine in May, 17 leading Canadian and U.S. researchers confirmed the Canadian system leads to health outcomes as good, or better, than the U.S. private system, at less than 50 per cent of the cost.”
In regard to BIG PHARMA:
“is that [Cuba, Canada and Britain] get cheap drugs only because they are free-riding off the massive profits made in the American market.”
“This is a standard U.S. brush-off to suggestions other countries might have useful ideas: The United States has done the heavy lifting and everyone else is piggybacking on its efforts. The only reason countries like Canada and Britain can afford universal health care is because they’re freeloaders.”
“In Britain, drug companies invested proportionately more of their revenues from domestic sales in research and development than U.S. companies. In Canada, in 2004, brand-name drug companies reported income from their domestic sales was about 10 times higher than their R&D costs, despite prices about 40 per cent lower than in the United States.”
Think this has anything to do with the billions spent on drug marketing in the U.S.? These expenses exceed those of drug research by a wide margin. Guess who pays?
Medicynic 