Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Canadian and American health care systems compared

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was KEEP. -Splash 01:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Canadian and American health care systems compared

This falls under the category of "what wikipedia is not" because it is essentially "Opinions on current affairs". I have never seen one encyclopedia article anywhere that attempts to compare any two subjects. Any page that attempts to compare the merits of two things or two systems in inherently unencyclopedic. Barneygumble

• Keep. Comparative politics is a large and well studied field, and we have many such articles Canadian and Australian politics compared, Canadian and American politics compared, Canadian and American economies compared, British and U.S. military ranks compared, Chinese and English compared, Judaism and Christianity compared, and others. - SimonP 01:02, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but cleanup. - Jersyko talk 01:22, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - SimonP makes an excellent point. Explodicle 01:33, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, might need a little cleanup but otherwise it's worth keeping.Gateman1997 01:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with Healthcare system. Edwardian 01:47, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Definitely do not merge into healthcare. That would totally muddle the healthcare article. 132.205.95.43 23:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • If there is any place where healthcare systems should be discussed and compared, it is in Healthcare system... which is an entirely different article than Health care. There are currently NO health care systems discussed or compared in Healthcare system, yet this one exists. Edwardian 00:14, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as per SimonP. Article in question is actually quite NPOV given the subject matter. Fernando Rizo T/C 01:48, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, Obviously needs cleaning up and has POV but is beneficial for outsiders to understand the views and beliefs.rasblue 02:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Comment although I don't think articles that compare and contrast various entities is strictly speaking "encyclopedic", there is alot of good work involved in this one. It will be interesting to come back to it in a couple days and see if any edits are applied that improve the current content. Hamster Sandwich 03:33, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Useful + true = encyclopedic, this seems to meet these standards, and is NPOV. →ubεr nεmo→ ^lóquï 03:54, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Neither "usefulness" nor the existance of other overly detailed articles are criteria for inclusion. The level of detail of subarticles is almost bordering that of scholarly papers by now. This does not add to our credibility. / Peter ^Isotalo 11:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. How can an abundance of information affect an encyclopedia's credibility? Collecting and disseminating information is the whole point of this thing. 23skidoo 13:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
    • There is an extremely fine line between "abundance of information" and "excess of information" and every new article adds to the burden of those who have to verify it. That these kinds of nearly essay-like articles keep getting added at an ever increasing pace is going to make that burden so much harder to cope with. / Peter ^Isotalo 15:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Keep. If we're going to worry about "excess of information" than we might as well stop contributing to Wikipedia now and consider it done. Zhatt 16:59, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep per User:SimonP, but add footnotes CanadianCaesar 21:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per User:SimonP. --Apyule 05:25, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. — J3ff 05:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep The person who nominated this article is essentially a vandal/flamer, there's no reason to just let him go around deleting things he doesn't like, or can't successfully vandalize--172.154.221.179 14:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep The points are well made. Has POV but with attention could be a useful article. zaw061 14:06, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete The comparison is intrinsically political and seems designed to cheerlead Canada's health care system instead of offering even-handed analysis. Dottore So 20:10, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Dottoreso
  • So fix it. DoubleBlue (Talk) 20:21, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
    • If fixing it is possible. It's hard not for any article comparing the two systems to "appear" to "cheer" Canadian healthcare over the U.S. Even handed analysis of the two systems invariably will look like cheering since Canadian healthcare is virtually free. Gateman1997 01:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
      • If a NPOV, verifiable, even-handed analysis seems to favour the Canadian system, then why shouldn't it? If it would be POV and biased to try and make the analysis a draw, don't delete the article, admit that one side comes out smelling sweeter. DoubleBlue (Talk) 01:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The 'politics' of the article is through omission. What is the rate of MRIs/patient in the US v. Canada (or Great Britain, France or India for that matter). What are the specialists/patient ratios, the number of teaching hospitals per capita, the number of GPs per capita? More to the point, why do we need such a comparison. Shall we compare Togo's health care system to that of Fiji? Or Myanmar's to Bangladesh? Or Spain's to Portugal? What useful information is here (mortality rates, for example) could be merged into the existing articles on Medicare (Canada), or the Canada Health Act. But this comparison, in my view, is flawed in its very premise. (I do not doubt, however, the sincerity and good intentions of the author.)Dottore So 16:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keepuseful information well presented--AYArktos 01:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.