It's just a lazy argument to say central planning fails in healthcare, because it generally works well in other countries.
It's just a lazy argument to say central planning fails in healthcare, because it generally works well in other countries.
The biggest complaint I hear about the Canadian system are wait times, but those affect the expensive US system, too. My wife needed back surgery and couldn't get it scheduled until 6 months out in the US, after jumping through health insurance hoops (useless procedures to check boxes) for 6 months prior to that.
Ended up in the ER told "don't move or you might not walk again" while she had to wait 2 days, writhing in pain (but not allowed to move!) until a surgeon performed her surgery 4 months earlier than scheduled.
And we paid 10s of thousands of dollars, which took years to pay off.
Outcomes aren't uniformly better, by the way. Canada routinely ranks near the bottom of the OECD and like one notch above America, but in America you can get the best healthcare in the world (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, etc.)
Canada has no equivalent - the small Cleveland Clinic presence in Canada hasn't bothered trying to open a hospital because it would basically be impossible, unlike in the UK where private hospitals still exist.
The healthcare professionals in Canada are very well-trained, but there are too few of them and they're smothered in useless bureaucracy.
another day on the news, someone suffered a stroke and because the ambulance didn't come on time she is partially paralyzed.
another couple had a miscarriage with the mother dying because surgical tools were not sanitized properly.
some desperate and sick of waiting travel to US or abroad (Korea, Japan).
family doctor, nurse shortage is half the problem. canadian medical school breadth of teaching is generalist and do not go deep enough.
there are now calls for privatization. i wish people would stop fetishizing canadian public health care, its better than nothing but behind the rest.