Canada should look to the Netherlands to improve healthcare: study
Posted June 22, 2014 3:08 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – With our healthcare system coming under fire for poor performance, a similar system in the Netherlands is setting the benchmark.
The Dutch healthcare system is mandatory private and has insurance companies competing for business, which has led to a higher doctor-to-patient ratio.
Author Nadeem Esmail with the Fraser Institute says we can learn several things from the Dutch. “We find a set of policies that are very different from Canada’s, but policies that are very much in line with other top performing universal access healthcare systems. They have private competition in financing and delivery, they have cost sharing. Competition and financial responsibility creates a more accessible, higher performing healthcare system.”
Last year Canadians waited four-and-a-half months on average for necessary procedures.
“It’s well time Canadians look beyond the current structure of medicare for answers to the problems we face every day with the healthcare system. The Dutch experience shows clearly that private competition and appropriate financial incentives for patients and providers can mean a better universal access healthcare system,” he adds.
One-in-10 emergency room patients can wait eight hours or more for treatment.
