Medical costs would be the second great challenge. For the US, simply adopting cost controls used by every other advanced economy would solve most of that problem.
Can you expand on the bolded.
I've never head of "cost controls" on healthcare since I left the US.
AFAIK every Canadian, or at least every Ontarian, is entitled to the best treatments available anywhere.
Unproven quackery excepted of course.
Terry
Sure. There's no shortage of concrete examples. When the Canadian (or UK, or EU, or Singapore, or...etc) decide to make Viagra available, they decide (in negotiations with Pfizer) exactly how much each pill will cost the health care system. In the US, Pfizer charges whatever the market will bear. Offhand, I'm guessing Viagra costs 3 times as much in the US.
Multiply that by every other kind of pill by every manufacturer in the world. Availability of generics reduces that differential, but US doctors get perverse incentives to prescribe patent-only meds.
In the US, the same holds for daily charges for hospital bed-days, including ICU bed-days. Medicare pays fixed amounts, but each hospital gets to demand what they demand of insurers. Big insurers, having more market clout, get better rates. Uninsured folks, insanely, have to pay the very highest amounts.
In the US, the same holds for medical devices. You need a stent for a cardiac artery in the US, the cost will be whatever the market will bear, not a price negotiated on behalf of the whole healthcare system. Or use of a defibrillator. Or a patented bed for control of pressure ulcers. Or, or, or, or. . .
Insanely, US doctors are vehemently opposed to "price controls." It's insane, because doctor fees are the *only* part of the system that are currently under effective price controls. Medicare pays a specific, set, non-negotiated fee for a doctor's time, and all the insurers pay a fixed percentage close to that. Of course, uninsured folk have to pay whatever the market price will bear. And almost nobody shops for doctors on the basis of the demanded fee structure.
So, yes, Canada has strong price controls while making sure all essential needs are covered. The US has minimal price controls, where "coverage" isn't necessarily what determines what consumers actually can afford.
This isn't a feature of single-payer healthcare. Some countries enact effective price controls under "all-payer" healthcare systems. Medicare in the US (currently) is a single-payer system, with utterly inadequate price controls. That's why Medicare is far more expensive than the Canadian system, while still imposing steep premiums, copays, and deductibles. "Medicare for all" isn't remotely a solution. Cost controls would make *any* system vastly more affordable, certainly including the ObamaCare structure.
