American-style health care? No thanks

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This article was published 01/03/2025 (228 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like a mounting storm, the madness south of the border continues to expand and escalate. In fairness, the troll king promised sweeping societal tumult, and that’s what we’re getting.

Not surprisingly, the health of Americans is squarely in the crosshairs. An already dismal system — the U.S. consistently ranks among the lowest of wealthy nations in population health indices — risks being further degraded by the Trump administration’s assault on all but the richest in that country.

As Canadians are now more acutely aware than ever, machinations to the south directly impact our world. The elder Trudeau once remarked that the relationship with our southern neighbour is akin to sleeping with an elephant, and now that elephant is utterly unstable.

For his part, Trump would have us believe that a U.S. takeover of Canada would translate into “much better” health care for Canadians.

The idea — like Trump himself — is laughable. But, idiotic or not, what Trump says and does needs to be taken seriously.

Universal health care, a wildly popular concept in Canada and one that polls show most Americans also support, has been repeatedly demonized by the U.S. political-corporate class, much to the suffering of millions in that country. Meanwhile, the U.S. spends vastly more per capita on health spending than any other country in the world — with substantially poorer outcomes.

Let that sink in. The Americans spend more health dollars per person than anyone else by far. Paradoxically, their population health is worse than other developed nations.

The Canadian health-care system is not impervious to the chaos down south. Be it through seepage of neoconservative ideology into Canadian discourse, or through direct threats on sovereignty — an assault which, by corollary, would destroy autonomous policy decisions — the direction of our own health-care model is imperilled.

We hear repeatedly of the crisis in Canadian health care.

In far too many ways, this is a legitimate charge. That our system is in disarray is not in question. The reasons for this are myriad in their complexity and need immediate, sustained attention.

But this is a case of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, to borrow an overused and somewhat macabre metaphor. Dismantling universal, publicly sponsored care for a privately funded alternative is not a tenable option, as our American neighbours have generously highlighted through their own experience.

For-profit care has long been proffered as a solution to the plethora of problems facing the Canadian health-care landscape.

Yet the American model illustrates that, across a broad range of health indices — from infant mortality to life expectancy — market allocation of resources does not benefit the population as a whole.

It would be easy to dismiss Trump and his newly appointed vaccine-denying health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were it not for the vast power at their disposal to execute an agenda designed to generate more wealth for the already super rich.

As Canadians, we need to remember lessons garnered from history. The right to universal health care was not granted to us by wealthy interests from above. Instead, it was wrested through struggle by those fighting from below.

Similarly, we must hold our politicians to account in curating and enhancing this system, instead of offering platitudes designed to win votes while offering little in the way of meaningful improvements to a foundering edifice.

We have much work to do. Innovation is sorely needed to improve efficiency, integrate disparate sectors, and rein in a burgeoning self-perpetuating administrative apparatus that provides little added value.

There are plenty of examples elsewhere from which we can learn and adapt. Too often, unfortunately, we turn south for inspiration instead of looking further afield for evidence-based solutions to challenges that are piling up.

The southern distraction should be used a motivator to make changes to our own system.

Just as the tariff threat spurred meaningful discussion on reducing interprovincial trade barriers — a sticking point that dogged internal markets for years — so too can a heath-care system in crisis mark an impetus for change.

Our health-care system — like our country — does not take marching orders from the U.S., and certainly not from moral degenerates like Trump, Musk and their mewling sycophants.

Andrew Lodge is an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba and medical director of Klinic Community Health.