Canadian health care

Dr. Anthony Lordon, a New Brunswick family physician, recently wrote an op-ed piece claiming (BDN, Nov. 20) that in Maine, we were lucky to have a federal judge block our efforts to secure reasonable prescription drug prices. He has gotten it all wrong. Instead of trying to do something about high costs, he recommends that we focus our efforts on expanding the programs to make prescription drugs more available to those with low incomes.

Dr. Lordon obviously wrote without much understanding of what has been going on here in Maine. He conveniently overlooks the recent successful efforts to expand the low-income program here in Maine.

He also makes a much more serious error in criticizing the Canadian health program. If the Canadians spent anywhere near the gross national product on health care that we spend, they would have a Cadillac plan in spades. They spend about 9.5 percent of their income on health care, while we are right around 14 percent. And the Canadians show up with better health care results in measures such as infant mortality and life expectancy than we do.

He concludes his commentary by stating that the Canadian government health care system’s “weakness is in its cost controls and rationing and the lack of choice that it provides to patients.” What he fails to recognize is that the cure rests in the public arena. We in Maine have sought a public remedy to the problem of the high price of prescription drugs. He should recognize that the problems he identifies with the Canadian system can also be resolved by convincing the Canadian public that health care deserves a greater allocation of public resources from provincial and federal budgets.

I do not know any Canadians who would trade their system, with all its faults, for ours. I do know a great many Americans who look with envy at the Canadian health system. Meanwhile, the Maine Council of Senior Citizens, the Maine State Employees Association, the Maine AFL-CIO and many other organizations will continue to do everything possible to insure that prescription drugs are affordable for all Maine citizens. John H. Marvin Augusta