I get the impression that most Americans have never heard about any foreign health care systems except the Canadian one, and often only hear about that in very negative terms. Of course, in any BoingBoing discussion, more Canadians will weigh in than any other nationality.
Those are two very different systems.
That describes the Canadian system. Since health care is a provincial responsibility, there are differences across the country. Quebec, for example, allows private clinics. In Ontario, private hospitals aren’t allowed, although a handful of private hospitals were grandfathered in years ago. There are also independent not-for-profit clinics like the Kensington Eye Institute in Toronto, where I had my cataract surgery. Doctors are self-employed, and if my doctor orders blood tests or x-rays, they will be done by a private lab. In all these cases, the Ontario government reimburses the provider, and I don’t pay anything out-of-pocket.
A similarly blinkered attitude to the one you describe exists north of the border. Because of decades of attacks on our healthcare system by American corporations and free-market absolutists like the Fraser Institute, Canadians are hypersensitive to any suggestion of private for-profit health care, and our antennae go up at any suggestion of change to our system. This sometimes hinders our ability to look clearly at what other countries are doing, and to examine what they do better.
You’re perfectly right that ideally, America should look at best practices around the world. I’d love to see that happen.
What made me think of it: While wandering through YouTube, I started watching vlogs produced by this Canadian woman who’s lived in Japan for over 10 years. She evidently makes her living mainly by doing videos about Japanese culture, and is fascinating partially because, unlike me, she is relentlessly positive and always has something to say. Anyway, she has that subtle way of pronouncing words with “ou” that gives her away as a Canadian.
There must be a good side of marrying someone whose accent you can’t understand.
Fortunately Dave Foley is ready to explain the difference between Canadians and Americans to us (he was right about Russia, too).
The general idea is that you should get it done on your lunchbreak. And be quick about it, so you can fill out a job application for a second job before you have to clock back in. You’ll need it to pay the medic bill.
Plenty of those in the U.S. as well. Especially when there’s only one psychiatrist in the state that accepts your insurance, or your local in-network dermatologist has just gone on maternity leave.
(last statement intentionally in contrast to the statement above )
Geez. I had my appendix out a couple of months ago. It was overnight in a private hospital and I paid $100. I had the debrief with the surgeon yesterday. Paid nothing.
I also live in Australia.
Healthcare isn’t free free here either. But it’s pretty damn good.
What I like about that Dave Foley bit is that it’s as much of a dig at certain Canadians as it is a dig at any Americans. Sure, the joke is “you can tell those Americans anything and they’ll believe it” but it’s also “we Canadians can be embarrassingly smug and condescending, eh?”
Some Canadians relish any opportunity to 'splain Canada to Americans, unbidden and sometimes rather passive aggressively, say in the form of a series of trivia questions (how many provinces etc. etc.). It goes way beyond simply answering questions as in most of the present discussion.
Some derive a perverse sense of national pride from stereotyping Americans as thoroughly ignorant of Canada – how dare they know so little about us? – and take any opportunity to mock them for it.
The CBC news-parody shows This Hour Has 22 Minutes and its spinoff Rick Mercer Report dined out on “the ignorant American” for years.
When the alternative is health insurance that you can’t afford (and won’t take you anyway, because of pre-existing condition bullshit), that is a massive improvement.
Anecdotal evidence:
I used to see a specialist for a non-life-threatening condition who was 300 miles away and had a year long waiting list. I spent about £150 total on travel costs for four visits, which was later refunded to me. I can’t remember how much private treatment cost, other than it was so far beyond what I could afford it may as well have been non-existent (and as I said, private health insurance hates pre-existing conditions).
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