Article content

Arguing long wait times need not be the natural consequence of public health care, a new e-book by the Fraser Institute points out France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have managed to maintain relatively lineup-free health-care systems — all while spending less money.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Canada could shorten health-care wait times by building 'market-based policies' into system, author says Back to video

Higher health-care spending “does not necessarily result in more timely access to health-care services,” writes Nadeem Esmail, the Fraser Institute’s director of health policy studies.

Instead, Mr. Esmail says the solution is to build “market-based policies” into the system.

Among them, paying specialists with fees for service, instead of salaries, to promote competition and introducing co-payments to encourage “patients to consider the costs associated with the demands they are making on the health-care system.”

Most importantly, he notes, countries with shorter waiting times fund their health care through social insurance systems or subsidized private institutions, rather than tax-financed, government-run systems.