I live in Canada and I have never had to wait for any medical treatment (I don’t have any serious diseases though). But comparing the Canadian system to the US is not valid. Canada has a population 1/10th that of the US but has a geographic area larger than US (our largest city has only a few million people). With a population so small you can’t expect to have certain specialists in every town, so you have to travel 2000 miles sometimes to see some rare specialists. And yes you might have to wait because there simply aren’t enough doctors around, and the ones that are will be booked solid. It’s not the system that is at fault, it’s the small size of our population and huge geography. So you’re comparing apples to oranges here.

That Canadian lady who is on TV telling America about Canadian wait times paid $100,000 to have the operation she wanted. Most Canadians don’t have that kind of money lying around (and likely neither do you). So sometimes Canucks have to wait, and rarely they die. But if a Canadian can afford it, they can travel to the US and pay for whatever they want. And by the way, that lady’s $100k operation might not even work.

But here’s the other part of healthcare reform: It is going to cost you big bucks (there is no getting around this). In Canada a gallon of gas is always about $1.50 more than in the US, mostly tax to pay for health care. Our income and sales taxes are higher than the US, primarily to pay for healthcare. The taxes on cigarettes and alcohol make them about twice as expensive as in the US, to pay for healthcare. Our military used to have a big budget before healthcare was introduced in the 1970’s, but now our military has been gutted to pay for health care. Over the years, automobile daytime running lights, seatbelts, and helmets for bikers have become mandatory to reduce healthcare costs. And the constant arguing by politicians over healthcare is endless and tiring. All of these things take some of the fun out of our country. So if you get healthcare in the US, expect taxes to gradually rise over the years and military spending to slowly go down. And expect endless, boring political bickering. But it won’t cost you or your family $100,000 to have an operation (that might not even work).