| eab said: Two notes about health care and Canada: 1) Canada's health care isn't perfect. They don't offer some of the more expensive, more effective treatments in the US. Not to mention the fact that if you want a simple surgery you have to wait for months. You know what many Canadians do if they want better quality, faster treatments? They go to the US. There are hundreds of clinics right under the border that are there for Canadians who want to pay for better health care. People who want the best treatments go to the US, I mean heck even the Premier of the USSR once flew to Johns Hopkins for an eye surgery since no one in Russia was capable of doing it. Bottom line: Canada's healthcare is very good, but don't get the idea that it the best for everyone and every country. 2) People seem to get the idea that if your poor, you die in the U.S. this simply isn't true. If you are sick and show up at a hospital you get the treatment you need. If you can't pay for it the taxpayers foot the bill. I work at a hospital part time and I can tell you, about 30% of the patients that stay overnight end up not paying for it. The U.S. already spends about 1/4 of its taxation income on medicare, medicaid, and the like. Bottom line: Sure in the U.S. you don't get free prescriptions or surgery, but no one is denied life saving operations. |
A more correct way to put it is "Canada's healthcare system isn't adequate" ... Every political party within Canada (provincial or federal) admits that; unfortunately the feeling of entitlement that has been built by creating a national social program prevents an open discussion on fixing the system. Currently, every provincial government's largest expense is healthcare and the costs are increasing at a rate far faster than inflation or tax revenues; at the current rate of growth in costs, in 5 years the quality level of service we currently see will be a distant dream.
Whenever their is a debate on two tier healthcare people talk about the horrors of the "American" healthcare system, but (as you mentioned) there is no corpse wagon going around communities with a man calling for you to "Bring out your dead" ... which may be what we will see in the near future in Canada if something doesn't change.
