Picking and Choosing

Back on the topic of health care for a moment, one of the things I often run across in health care discussions is arguments of the following nature:

Premise 1) (Some) European health care systems rank higher than the Canadian system on many performance measures
Premise 2) (Most) European health care systems allow some sort of two tier care / parallel private system
Conclusion: Canada should allow some sort of two tier care / parallel private system.

Today, all I want to do is point out an alternate 'premise 2)' that the people who espouse the above argument rarely seem to consider.

The OECD tracks lots of health statistics for its members (Europe, North America, and the most developed countries from Asia/Oceania). Here is a chart of the percentage of total health care spending which is done through the public system (for 2002, click to expand):



As you can see from the chart, the large majority of European countries have public health systems which cover a greater percentage of total health expenditures than the Canadian one.

So how about the following argument:

Premise 1) (Some) European health care systems rank higher than the Canadian system on many performance measures
Premise 2) (Most) European health care systems cover a greater percentage of total health costs through the public system than the Canadian one does
Conclusion: Canada should increase the percentage of health costs covered by the public system to meet the European average.

No? Why not?