One of the reasons many countries with some variation of a public health care system spend lower fractions of GDP on health care than the US is because compensation in the US is pretty generous. Essentially, the US missed the window of opportunity to create some compensation cost growth friction at the time a lot of other countries were doing it.
Canada has been trying to keep that pressure bottled up. It's bound to eventually escape, and then the politicians and mandarins will have to deal with it. Hopefully Ford will succeed in popping the cap and we can get on with it. Then I will look forward to the essays arguing why its OK to find ways to hold down compensation for people in health-related fields, but police and soldiers and teachers and whatnot all have to have compensation which is competitive with the "free market".
