Ottawa Citizen, August 31, 2006

OTTAWA - California legislators are poised to vote for a "Canadian-style" health-care system this week, in a bill that would outlaw private care throughout the state.

Senate Bill 840, which is widely expected to pass final reading, would provide free medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage to all California residents through a state-run agency.

Canada has been front and centre in the vitriolic debate sparked by the bill, which must be approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to become law.

"We've learned from the Canadian system and integrated it into a plan specifically for California," said Sara Rogers, a spokeswoman for Senator Sheila Kuehl, who put forward the bill.

"A universal health-care plan is the only way California can solve its health-care problems," she added, noting that more than six million Californians have no health insurance.

"Studies by the World Health Organization show that Canada spends about half of what we do on health care, but the overall health outcomes are comparable."

Opponents of the bill have also thrust the spotlight on Canada's system, citing long waiting lists, lack of equipment and doctor shortages as proof that a publicly funded system would lead to catastrophe.

"Californians do not want the rationed care and long waits in line that people living in Canada and Europe have been forced to endure," says Greg Aghazarian, chair of the Republican caucus for the state assembly.

Critics also point out that last year, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down Quebec's ban on private clinics, ruling it violated patients' human rights.

"There is a whole mythology about the Canadian health-care system," says John Graham, director of health-care studies for the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based conservative think-tank.

"People need to look past the rhetoric and see the reality," which is not only poor access to services, but the exodus of physicians, argues Graham. He warns that California doctors will flee to Nevada to avoid a nanny state.

But Dr. Tom Noseworthy of the Toronto-based Canadian Doctors for Medicare, says such "anti-Canadian rhetoric" is nonsense.

"They paint Canada as a place where people are dying in the streets for lack of health care. That's just not true."

About 46 million Americans have no health insurance at all, he points out: "That's more than the population of Canada put together."

Noseworthy adds that, in the U.S., access to state-of-the-art care is only better for the top-earning 20 per cent of the population; access for the lowest-earning 20 per cent to standard care is "substantially better" in Canada.

Heidi Gantwerk, of ViewPoint Learning Inc., a La Jolla-based policy consulting agency, says a recent study she co-authoured found Californians had a "tremendous openness to powerful health-care reforms."

In fact, San Francisco has already gone ahead with its own version of universal care: Earlier this month, Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a law that would make the city the first in the U.S. to offer health care to its 82,000 uninsured residents.

© 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.