Re: New health insurance marketplaces signing up few uninsured Americans, two surveys
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) produced this report about canadian health care system vs. the US one pre-ObamaCareDisater.
First about NBER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community."[1] The NBER is well known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.
The NBER is the largest economics research organization in the United States.[2] Many of the American winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were NBER Research Associates. Many of the Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers have also been NBER Research Associates, including the former NBER President and Harvard Professor, Martin Feldstein.
The NBER's current President and CEO is Professor James M. Poterba of MIT.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429.pdf?new_window=1
ABSTRACT
Does Canada's publicly funded, single payer health care system deliver better health outcomes and distribute health resources more equitably than the multi-payer heavily private U.S. system? We show that the efficacy of health care systems cannot be usefully evaluated by comparisons of infant mortality and life expectancy. We analyze several alternative measures of health status using JCUSH (The Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health) and other surveys. We find a somewhat higher incidence of chronic health conditions in the U.S. than in Canada but somewhat greater U.S. access to treatment for these conditions. Moreover, a significantly higher percentage of U.S. women and men are screened for major forms of cancer. Although health status, measured in various ways is similar in both countries, mortality/incidence ratios for various cancers tend to be higher in Canada. The need to ration resources in Canada, where care is delivered "free", ultimately leads to long waits. In the U.S., costs are more often a source of unmet needs. We also find that Canada has no more abolished the tendency for health status to improve with income than have other countries. Indeed, the health-income gradient is slightly steeper in Canada than it is in the U.S.
...
Briefly, our findings are: No significant differences are evident in the four health status indicators available in the JCUSH data; A somewhat greater incidence of chronic health conditions in the U.S. combined with evidence of greater access to health treatments in the U.S.; greater access in the U.S. to important health care resources and no evidence that the income/health gradient is any different between the U.S. and Canada. Finally, on two questions asked about satisfaction with health services and the ranking of the quality of services recently received, more U.S. residents than Canadians answered fully satisfied and excellent.
