First Impressions of Health Care in Canada Part III

CaduceusThis is Part III of III

Very few people I have met, and I really mean very few, reject the Canadian health care system outright.  Again, many complain, but few would abandon their system.  For everyday illness, for flus and colds and all the crap that kids get, it’s easy to get in to see a doctor.  How often, until you reach the age of 35 or 40, does a person actually need to see a medical specialist?  On the whole, the Canadian experience that I have heard of isn’t that much different than the one that I have experienced in the United States.  Sometimes you have to wait to see a specialist, sometimes one is immediately available.  If there is an emergency you will get treatment.  But as far as people being denied treatment because the government refused to pay for it, as far as “death panels,” I have yet to hear anyone say anything that the government would intentionally deny treatment to someone who clearly needed it.  There are stories here and there of people dying without treatment, of people who waiting for heart surgery only to die before it was their turn, but those events happen no more frequently in Canada than they do in the United States.

Do me a favor.  Open up a window in your preferred Internet browser and go to Google.com and perform a simple search.  Type in the words “denied health care” and see if you can find any instances in the first five pages of anyone from Canada being denied health care.  Chances are you won’t find any.  You’ll see a whole lot about a fat four-month-old baby in Colorado that was turned down for insurance because he had a pre-existing condition, you’ll see a story about a woman who was denied coverage because she had been raped and there was a chance that she had contracted HIV, and you’ll see quite a few other stories of Americans being denied insurance and care, but you won’t read about Canadians being denied health care.

Now search for “denied health care in Canada.”  You’ll actually find that very few of the first five pages of returns are actually about people in Canada denied health care.  There are more stories about Americans being denied care.  Down in the comments section of the article someone invariably uses the word “Canada” and Google returns it as a hit.  Or the returns are the text of speeches or newspaper editorials warning of what will happen if Canada abandons its single-payer system.  I could only find a few hits that were actual stories of Canadians being denied care, and those stories were related by an American opposed to a single-payer health care system.

As a person who until very recently had no health insurance and hadn’t had any for the previous two years, I can very honestly say that I’m greatly relieved to have health care.  And it wasn’t actually free.  We ended up paying about $1700 for our family for one year.  That number will decrease to $1000 or less if I end up getting insurance through my employer.  That’s medical, dental, and vision.  My wife doesn’t have to pay for contacts.  Our kids don’t have to pay for their checkups and visits.  With all of the other things that there are to worry about, we never have to worry about whether or not we’ll be able to pay to go to the doctor, because we’ll never be denied treatment.  We really couldn’t ask for much more than that at this point in our lives.

Fin