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“It’s clear they want to move to more American-style, private profit in our public health-care system,” stated opposition health critic David Shepherd.

While Canada ranks above the U.S. in many health-care metrics, our system isn’t the envy of the world.

The Commonwealth Fund, a New York Times panel of health policy experts and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet have all ranked Canada’s system relatively poorly when compared to other top industrialized countries.

Alberta’s median wait time from referral by general practitioner to treatment by a specialist is 28 weeks. And despite the Alberta government spending $1,000 per person more every year on health care than Ontario, Alberta’s wait times are 12 weeks longer. This conjures up the famous quote from former chief Supreme Court judge Beverley McLachlin that “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

Fortunately, we can improve the health system by looking at places that outperform ours and by brushing off claims about the American health-care boogeyman.

Let’s look at the top three countries rated by the Commonwealth Fund: The United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands. All three are performing better than our system, all have universal coverage and all have business involvement in health care. Yet, we don’t hear horror stories from these countries about people having to remortgage their homes to pay their hospital bills.

The U.K.’s National Health Service involves universal taxpayer-funded coverage of health-care services provided in government hospitals. But it allows an independent insurance market and hospital network to operate and charge patients.