There’s a great article about the Canadian healthcare system over at Campaign for America’s Future debunking a lot of the myths that we here all the time here in the United States.
Honestly, the more I hear about it, the more attractive the Canadian system sounds. According to the article, it isn’t nationalized health care, but rather more like nationalized health insurance. Basically, everyone is covered by the government health insurance.
As you might imagine, this greatly reduces overhead and waste for the doctors, who no longer have to deal with dozens of different insurance companies and who no longer have to argue with an insurance company to convince them to pay for their patients’ care.
And the article deals with the tax issue too; although Canadian taxes are higher, they also don’t have to pay ridiculous heath insurance premiums like we (or our employers) do here in the States. I’ll bet it evens out pretty well.
I’ve spent the last year trying to get health insurance, which has been difficult since I’m self-employed and since I have a preexisting condition. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has explicitly refused to cover me. The more frustrated I get with the state of health insurance in this country, the more I think that Canada has the most sane health care system out there.
I wonder how hard it would be to emigrate.