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There are strong moves within Canada to make theCanadian health care system more like the US sys-tem by partially privatizing it. Those who favour this approach claim that the US system offers more choice and better quality of care and spares the public purse. Some pro-ponents even go so far as to claim that it is more efficient. My purpose here is to disabuse Canadians of these myths by taking a close look at how the US system works and com-paring it with the Canadian system. In 1972 the Yukon Territory became the last jurisdiction in Canada to adopt the Medical Care Act, which set up a sys-tem to provide hospital and physician care to all Canadians.1 Before then, the Canadian and US health care systems were similar. Both were partly public, partly private, partly for profit and partly nonprofit. Both also left a great many citi-zens uninsured. The costs were also about the same — a lit-tle over $300 per person in 1970 — as were outcomes. A