Looking North for Health: What We Can Learn from Canada's Health Care System

This collection of academic essays gathered under the aegis of Families USA, a D.C.-based group that advocates health care reform, provides a detailed account of Canada's national health insurance system and demolishes myths about its perceived inferiority. Allen E. Blakeney, former Saskatchewan premier, describes the political struggles that led to the first public health insurance in the '60s; Canadian health economist Robert G. Evans and Perrin Beatty, the minister of communications and a Tory, each provide an overview of the system and the cultural factors which support it; elsewhere, Rosalie Kane, a University of Minnesota professor of public health, examines the mechanics of long-term care in Canada while Paul Pallan, an administrator in British Columbia, discusses the needs of the elderly. Presenting the Canadian model as a beacon for the U.S., Bennett, media director of Families USA, and Adams, former chief economist to the Canadian Medical Association, argue for a one-tier, classless system that uses tax revenues to deliver ample and humane lifelong care. (Apr.)