Hip replacement US vs. Canada

Something I did not know when discussing hip-replacement data US v. Canada, which was pointed out today by Princeton Economist Paul Krugman

On the other hand, it's true that Americans get hip replacements faster than Canadians. But there's a funny thing about that example, which is used constantly as an argument for the superiority of private health insurance over a government-run system: the large majority of hip replacements in the United States are paid for by, um, Medicare.

That's right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a comparison of two government health insurance systems. American Medicare has shorter waits than Canadian Medicare (yes, that's what they call their system) because it has more lavish funding — end of story. The alleged virtues of private insurance have nothing to do with it.

Which means when it comes to hip-replacements we are basicly comparing the US public system, to the Candian public system. Not some dramatic public vs. private show down. That is why I heard some people argure for the Medicare-for-all plan of someone like Kucinich (here and here and here and here).

update: Ezra Klien points out

A state-run system could decide, as Medicare does, that they'll pay for any and all necessary procedures, and do so quickly. Then there would be no rationing. There would be, as there is in Medicare, enormous spending and astonishingly fast cost growth. Instead, other systems, and their attendant societies, makes a judgment to devote relatively fewer resources to health care and relatively more to other things (like leisure!). That's a fair allocation of resources.

What we do in this society is devote relatively unlimited resources to health carefor wealthy and insured peopleand relatively fewer to health care for poor people. It isn't clear whether we think that's a useful way to spend trillions of dollars, or whether we'd prefer some alternate ordering of expenditures, with more going to preventive medicine and paid maternal leave.