When it comes to health care, Canadians only seem to care about one thing: Are we better than the United States?
As long as we “beat” the U.S., we remain smug about our performance, although this attitude can be hard to square with the tens of thousands of Canadians who get quick access to top-level care in the U.S. each year, or the snowbirds vaccinated for COVID weeks or months ahead of their stay-at-home peers.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute took aim at Canadian smugness recently with its COVID Misery Index. Using public data, researchers compared 15 developed countries on 16 measures grouped into three categories: Disease Misery, Response Misery, and Economic Misery.