A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a Covid-19 Antibody Test. It Cost $10,984

Probably there needs to be some education effort. In Canada we consider tax-paid healthcare to be the norm. The vast majority of us would never want to have what the US has. There are people who want a hybrid system though, but we also recognize that trying to do both has always failed everywhere that's ever tried. We do occasionally revisit the idea to figure out new options, but they always end up with the Universal plans suffering since it triggers nearly everyone to demand that they don't pay for "the others" and would rather use their money elsewhere (always until the day they discover they actually still need that healthcare they weren't willing to pay for, but its no longer there because they didn't want to pay for its existence.) It's pretty much impossible to come up with a plan for both since everyone naturally wants to keep their money when they can, then complain after-the-fact about what they lose as a result. And everybody will wind up needing it eventually, no matter how generally healthy they are, and won't be stuck with those multi-thousand dollar invoices and health-related bankruptcies as a result of not paying beforehand.

Our taxes are higher, but we get a lot of mileage out of it. And nobody can honestly say the tax is crippling. In Ontario our minimum wage is $14 (was going to be $15, but our Conservative premier made cuts to everything just to piss off the Liberals, as they are wont to do in Canadian politics. It's like your Dems/Reps in many respects.) It makes sense that "sin taxes" for things like alcohol, tobacco and gasoline pay for things like medical care and maintaining roads. Who cares if it costs more to smoke and get drunk every day if it pays for your eventual liver and lung care?

Every Canadian eventually appreciates that we can get cancer screening, non-elective surgeries, and so many types of physical and mental therapies for "free" because they're already paid for. But for whatever reason, Republicans have succeeded in convincing Americans that social medicine equals communism. It's that scary word "social" and that scarier concept "tax."

Sure a lot of Canadians complain about wait times. But that's because more people are able to use the healthcare system as designed, so there are times the hospitals are flooded - the very times you'd expect and hope American hospitals would also be flooded, since people aren't weighing paycheck-to-treatment ratios and avoiding treatments that might cause financial hardship or bankruptcy. And knowing general populations the world over, it would be impossible to come up with anything besides "Biblical miracle workers for all" that wouldn't be met with complaints and crazy voter crises.

PS: About those dreadful wait times: I had a cancer screening return "abnormal" and so I had to set up an appointment for a more in-depth procedure to check. My wait time? 2 weeks. And it's pandemic time, so I'm pretty impressed.

Years ago when my doctor discovered I had a cyst in my ear and wanted to dig it out (same thing Stephen Colbert had, except I can't do his famous ear clicky trick - I tried!), my surgery wait time was 2 months, since it isn't as dire and immediate. My out-of-pocket cost for all? $0. So I'm not one of those people complaining about it. There might be room for improvement, but I wouldn't want to see it step backward.