Canada ranks 23rd for consumer friendliness in healthcare within the Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index 2008 report issued by the Swedish Health Consumer Powerhouse and the Canadian Frontier Centre for Public Policy. This is the first time that Canada is included in a comprehensive benchmarking among 29 national European healthcare systems. The comparison for Europe was published on the 1^st of October 2007.

"The Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index shows that Canada does a mediocre job in fulfilling our commitment to excellent and accessible healthcare" said Rebecca Wahlberg, the project's lead researcher. "The Austrians, the French and the Dutch enjoy better and more accessible healthcare than we do, and at a lower cost per capita. There is no reason why Canada cannot improve and reach a similar level."

Johan Hjertqvist, President of the Health Consumer Powerhouse, also notes that “A country that has long waiting times to cancer treatments plus slow deployment speed of new cancer drugs does not get good outcomes in cancer treatments. This is the case for Canada, as well as for Denmark, Portugal and Ireland, countries that should be able to do better.”

The overall conclusion of the report is that the Beveridge health care system in the UK and Canada is in need of serious structural reforms and not able to compete with the Bismarck inspired method of countries like Austria, Germany, the Netherlands or France.