Canadians are outliving their American counterparts, in some cases by as much as a decade, and a new study suggests Canada’s public healthcare system is the reason.

According to lead author Dr. Anne Stephenson, at Toronto’s St Michael’s Hospital, Canadians with cystic fibrosis are living on average 10 years longer than Americans with the same disease.  When severity of disease, age and other variables were taken into account, Canadians had a 34% lower death rate than American patients overall; about the same as US patients with private insurance.  But Canadians had a 44% lower death rate than Americans on Medicaid and a 77% lower death rate than Americans with no health insurance at all.

Dr. Stephenson says there may be some sort of inherent differences in the health care systems themselves.  While many researchers have suggested that the profit motive in American health care and the strain it puts on families, may be to blame for the average lower life expectancy in the states.

According to the World Health Organization, regardless of the different systems, Canadians live almost three years longer than Americans overall.