National health insurance in the United States and Canada: Race, territory, and the roots of difference.

Explores why two countries that were very similar in many ways, struck out on radically divergent paths to public health insurance. Canada developed a universal single-payer system of national health care, while the United States opted for a dual system that combines public health insurance for low-income and senior residents with private, primarily employer-provided health insurance--sometimes no insurance-- for most other people.