ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how Americans’ and Canadians’ political values and attitudes correlate with their satisfaction with the health care system. It argues that higher satisfaction in Canada versus the United States cannot be primarily explained by marked differences in fundamental political values and attitudes. True, Canadians appear somewhat more favorable to government intervention than Americans are, but (as we shall see) these differences are not particularly important and could not account for the large satisfaction gap toward the health care system observed across both countries. Even as Canadians and Americans tend to converge on basic political principles, however, they hold rather divergent views about the basic principles on which their health care system should be based. Canadians express strong support for a single-payer universal health care system (Medicare in the Canadian sense), whereas Americans appear more divided about the merits of their market-based system.
