Methodological and Conceptual Issues in Health Care Systems Comparisons: Canada, Norway and the United States, 1991.

There is a growing interest in international comperative health care studies. Much of it is based on the hope that such studies will enable individual systems to improve by learning from the successes and failures of other systems. All such studies must presuppose, however, criteria for evaluating systems. The most widely used criteria are ability to deliver care at resonable cost (efficiency), adequacy of access to care delivered, and quality of care delivered. It is beyond the scope of this paper to develop a complete methodology for international comperative studies, but the project aims to move the process of the development of such a methodology forward. To help this process along, the study compares three health care systems, the Canadian health care system, the Norwegian health care system, and the health care system in the Unites States.