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percent of all health spending, $80 billion in 1992, on paperwork costs alone. This savings on bureaucracy would be enough to provide coverage to all of the uninsured and improve coverage for the underinsured with no increase in health spending.
Regarding paperwork costs, in 1987 24 percent of U.S. health spending went for administration as compared to 11 percent in Canada. This difference is dramatically illustrated by data from Massachusetts.
In 1990, Blue Cross/Blue Shield employed more than 6,600 people to acmiinister insurance to 2.5 million Massachussetts residents. By contrast, 435 people work for British Columbia’s provincial plan covering 3.1 million residents.
More people work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachussetts than work administering the entire Canadian NHP that covers 26 million people. If labor unions promoted this kind of inefficiency, it would be ridiculed as feather bedding.
So far as overall costs are concerned, Canada spent US $1,805 per capita for health care in 1989, according to Health and Welfare Canada estimates, while the U.S. spent $2,354 (U.S. Health Care Financing Administration). In the same year, about 30 percent more. Despite spending almost a third less per capita, Canada has a system that has succeeded in providing high quality care to all Canadians.
A measure of its success is the robust health of Canadians. Their average life expectancy of 77.2 years (compared to 75.4 for Americans) is among the highest in the world, while the infant mortality rate of 7 per 1,000 live births (compared to 11 in the U.S.) is one of the lowest.
Threatened by the apparent popular acceptance of NHP for the U.S., the insurance industry fought back in 1991 by launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to discredit Canada’s system.
News items repeated unsubstantiated stories about waiting lines in Canada, and about Canadians flocking across the border to obtain U.S. health care.
No mention was made of Canada’s success in providing cradle-to-grave health care for every citizen.
89.9%