Bob
I cannot comment on colon cancer cure rates or the medications involved but every country including Canada and the US have drug approval procedures that must be followed. If the drug is developed in the US, I assume that it would be approved there before it goes through the approval process up here. Unfortunately, Canadian Medicare may not always pay for a drug that has received Health Canada approval because of the cost. I assume that there are HMO's and private health insurance policies that do the same in the US. They will say that they do not pay for drug X but they do pay for drug Y simply because drug X costs 10 times as much as drug Y, and both supposedly do the same thing.
Wes
I saw a study some time back where 14 cents out of every medical dollar spent in the US went for administration cost whereas that number in Canada was 1 cent per dollar spent. I am not saying that government employees are more efficient but I have to assume that much of this has to do with lower paid workers in ordinary offices compared to highly paid executives in ivory towers.
One down fall of our system is that many doctors and highly skilled technicians leave Canada after gaining a certain level of experience and go to the US where they can earn much more money. The real kicker is that our education system is also government controlled so they get their education for a fraction of the cost compared to the US. They graduate then they leave and never pay any taxes here.
The best system is probably somewhere in between the totally public and totally for-profit private systems. There is mounting pressure in Canada to allow a parallel private system but the government is resisting any significant change.
Wayne