This research compares the provision of long term health care (LTC) services for the elderly in Canada and the United States (US). The underlying ideologies and the approach to the delivery of health care services are fudamentally different in the two countries Therefore, the underlying ideologies and approaches are discussed prior considering the provision of LTC for the elderly.
UNDERLYING IDEOLOGIES, AND APPROACHES TO
THE DELIVERY OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES
The ideology underlying the Canadian health care system is universality. Universality means that all persons are entitled to identical benefits, regardless of their station in life. All Canadian polls have indicated that the Canadian population overwhelmingly supports that country's univeral health care system.
In the United States, the underlying ideology for the health care system is said to be freedom of choice. Greater significance is attached by most American politicians and by almost all American physicians to the idea that each individual is able to select her or his own physician than is attached to the concept of universality of access.
The Canadian health care system is characterized by most American politicians and almost all American physicians as aform of socialized medicine, and it is contended that social ized medicine is inconsistent with the concept of freedom of choice. Canadians, however, are free to select the physician of their choice. Poor Americans are not. Further, recent national polls in the United States indicate that the majority of Americans no longer agree with the politicians over the pri orities underlying the delivery of health care. These same polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that the Canadian approach is superior to that in the United States.
In the 1980s, health care expenditures account for approx imately 10 percent of the gross national product in the United States (Council of Economic Adviser...