About Canada Health Care

As access to sufficient health care continues to become a dominant—and divisive—issue in the world today, this resource acts as a primer to the public health care system Canada has had in place for the last 30 years. While explaining the program's cost efficiency and dramatically better health outcomes compared with the United States' private health care system, it also addresses the complexities of the program, as well as the aspects that need improvement—such as wait times and the aging boomer generation. This analysis offers a detailed introduction on how the Canadian system works and assesses reforms currently underway, concluding that expanding Canada's public health care system, rather than privatizing it, is the best way to improve it.

Pat Armstrong is a professor of sociology and women's studies at York University, and she holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Chair in Health Services. She is the author of Exposing Privatization: Women and Health Care Reform in Canada. Hugh Armstrong is a professor at the School of Social Work and at the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University, and he currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Council on Aging of Ottawa and on the Community Advisory Committee of the Ottawa Hospital. He is the coauthor, with Pat Armstrong, of Heal Thyself: Managing Health Care Reform and Wasting Away: The Undermining of Canadian Health Care. They live in Toronto, Ontario.