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As a US citizen, your tax rates and multi-month waiting lists baffle me as well.

by m0zg 7y ago

mikepurvis 7y ago
Well, that is the perspective that is preventing the situation from improving. However, if you take the time to look into it, you may find that the situation is not as dire as conservative talk radio pundits would have you believe. For starters, nobody waits in an emergency. If you need urgent care, you get it— with no second mortgage needed. Waiting times vary a lot across the provinces and depending what kind of care is needed. Cancer treatment, for example, is very fast. Generally speaking, wait times are a function of overall funding, and funding has been cut repeatedly over the past three decades, as Canadians have consistently voted for tax cuts over investing in health care. See the decline as reported by the Fraser Institute: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2018 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa... (Although of course, they're a right-wing think tank, so their agenda is further tax cuts and privatization... take from it what you will.) As far as taxes, again beware of what you hear from US-based commentators about how bad it is. In fact, the income tax we pay is almost identical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_Ame...
Frondo 7y ago
Getting into a doctor in the US requires long waits, too! The last time I bought insurance, I decided to get a long-overdue checkup, so I went hunting for a doctor in-network. There goes one afternoon, just calling around to GPs to see if they were accepting new patients. Nope. A few weeks later I tried again and found someone could see me three months from then! And I'm paying $400 a month to get this with a $6500 deductible?? The "long wait times" critique of Canadian health care makes no sense in the face of actual American health care access. It's the same here, except we pay coming and going for it.

As a US citizen, your tax rates and multi-month waiting lists baffle me as well.

by m0zg 7y ago

As a US citizen, your tax rates and multi-month waiting lists baffle me as well.

Well, that is the perspective that is preventing the situation from improving. However, if you take the time to look into it, you may find that the situation is not as dire as conservative talk radio pundits would have you believe. For starters, nobody waits in an emergency. If you need urgent care, you get it— with no second mortgage needed. Waiting times vary a lot across the provinces and depending what kind of care is needed. Cancer treatment, for example, is very fast. Generally speaking, wait times are a function of overall funding, and funding has been cut repeatedly over the past three decades, as Canadians have consistently voted for tax cuts over investing in health care. See the decline as reported by the Fraser Institute: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2018 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa... (Although of course, they're a right-wing think tank, so their agenda is further tax cuts and privatization... take from it what you will.) As far as taxes, again beware of what you hear from US-based commentators about how bad it is. In fact, the income tax we pay is almost identical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_Ame...

Frondo 7y ago

Getting into a doctor in the US requires long waits, too! The last time I bought insurance, I decided to get a long-overdue checkup, so I went hunting for a doctor in-network. There goes one afternoon, just calling around to GPs to see if they were accepting new patients. Nope. A few weeks later I tried again and found someone could see me three months from then! And I'm paying $400 a month to get this with a $6500 deductible?? The "long wait times" critique of Canadian health care makes no sense in the face of actual American health care access. It's the same here, except we pay coming and going for it.