Once you have you'll quickly realise that the 'long wait times' narrative is complete propaganda FUD.
Anecdote time: My sister is anaphylactic, when she goes to the ER she is admitted, hooked up, and given epi almost immediately. When my aunt couldn't move her arm one day, she got an MRI, diagnosed brain cancer, and had brain surgery in the same week.
I'm glad to have a system that when you are waiting it's because there are people with more urgent needs, rather than because there are people who paid more.
> Once you have you'll quickly realise that the 'long wait times' narrative is complete propaganda FUD.
This is a decent example of the typical Canadian attitude I was referring to, blind refusal to even acknowledge any issues, such as the well documented long waiting times for non-emergency procedures, as well as the outright refusal to treat ailments deemed "not important enough" by your doctor.
Say I'm sitting around and I finally decide to get pain in my wrist looked at that I've had since I broke it ten years ago. I could see a specialist in less than a week. However, I probably would have had it looked at 7 or 8 years ago if I was in a single-payer system. Maybe I would have had to wait 6 months to see a doctor, but that still puts me about 7.5 years ahead of where I am now.
I know a lot of people who have bones that never healed right because an emergency room visit is going to cost you a fortune whether or not you are insured, so they don't go to the ER because it doesn't hurt 'that bad'. I imagine that is somewhat less prevalent in places with socialized healthcare.
It reminds me of an old joke about things that don't have a listed price: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it." I think that mentality is really prevalent in the US when it comes to healthcare, regardless of how expensive the procedure would actually be.
1. A friend of mine had severe back pains, all what he got from a family doctor was some painkillers and some stories that his back pain due to to weak muscles and he has to exercise more and wait a bit (3-6 months) before he can get some tests done. Anyways he moved to the US and week later made some tests to find that he has cancer in some serious stage. He started treatment but it was too late.
2. Another friend had spend 6 hours in ER with his eyelid cut in half (he got a branch into his eye while hiking).
3. I had some troubles with my daughter in Canada as well, don't want to go into details.
I eventually moved to the US and while healthcare here is outrageously and ridiculously expensive it is still years ahead of Canadian when you have a good insurance.
Anecdotes don't really do anything for us besides give us pointless things to argue about. You need to look at statistics like life expectancy, quality of life, average wait times, unnecessary deaths, etc.
The fact that you have to qualify your final statement with "when you have good insurance" is the whole problem. Before the ACA, that was far from a given, and even if you had good insurance it was too easy to lose. If Republicans have their way, we'll be back in that situation again.
I don't get it when people bring up situations like your #2. I'm sure it really, really sucked to wait six hours in the ER with an injury like that, but is it worse than staying home and trying to treat it yourself because you can't afford to visit the ER? Is it worse than dying from a simple condition because you can't afford to see a doctor?
Your doctor in Canada refusing to give you a referral to a specialist makes comparing these numbers not terribly useful.
> I don't get it when people bring up situations like your #2. I'm sure it really, really sucked to wait six hours in the ER with an injury like that, but is it worse than staying home and trying to treat it yourself because you can't afford to visit the ER? Is it worse than dying from a simple condition because you can't afford to see a doctor?
A system that allowed consumers to inject additional money into the system would increase the budget and managed properly(!), allow more total health care services to be provided to everyone.
Of course, "this will never work, all doctors will just move to the private sector" will be the refrain. Under our current society and so-called legal system perhaps, but put me in charge, I will put mandatory guidelines and levels of service in place, and then when doctors knowingly break the rules because based on history they well know they can do it without punishment, put a few of them in prison for 10 years, and watch compliance magically improve.
Surely even in the actual best in the world, waiting for something that is no urgent simply makes sense and is the only way it can function. Do you expect a hospital to have 5x as many beds and staff as is often required so you can have instant surgery on your non-urgent problem? (i.e. knee replacement)
Of course you wait a little bit while they schedule it in, otherwise it would cost an insane amount of money to have all those resources waiting around for your non-urgent problem.
My experience with "urgent" problems has always been instant in Canada - my broken nose, my brother's separated shoulder and broken legs. Even when I went in a week after being hit by a car I waited all of 5 minutes before a doctor saw me.