One interesting thing about traveling as a Canadian is the question you get from American tourists about Canada. Over the past few years, one of the most common ones is about how the healthcare system in Canada.
As healthcare prices in the US have continued to skyrocket, the government-run healthcare system in Canada has been held up as a shining example of a system America should aim for.
So when people ask, and I explain that wait times for non-emergency MRI’s can take a year, that elective surgery wait times can be two years, and that private diagnostic clinics have to operate illegally, it’s like watching the expression of a child who learns that Santa isn’t real.
Massive waits and poor service are just the days to day inefficiency of a system where users don’t pay directly for the services they consume. What most people don’t realize is the healthcare system in Canada (which doesn’t function that well to begin with) is only able to function in its current state because it is financed by massive amounts of government debt.
The only reason we’re able to get mediocre healthcare today is by stealing wealth from future generations.
In the US, the healthcare system is broken, but the problem is not that there isn’t enough government, it’s that there already is too much. Canadian healthcare is not a system to run towards but to run away from.
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