Health Care System Financing And Design: Convergent Trends In North America And Europe

Abstract

A study of the evolution of health care systems in Canada and Europe shows that the earlier effort at making health care services available to everybody was followed by reform measures focused on cost containment. In the U.S., the rapid rise in health care cost and low access are widely recognized as twin problems. Health care reform in this country first focused on cost containment through managed care to make health insurance affordable, and then shifted to expanding access to coverage at the state level without doing away with the private health insurance market.