The Canadian Health Care System is largely a joke though. Emergencies get such priority, that seeing specialists and getting diagnosed takes a back seat, often to the detriment of patients.
Many treatments in Canada are described as experimental. Erbitux, a cancer drug that targets individual cells in cancer patients, is deemed experimental, forcing Canadian patients to undergo chemo and radiation.
The point is that GOOD medical care costs money, and the care is no better anywhere else in the world than it is in America. Americans have to shoulder some of the responsibility to cover these costs in order to keep the best doctors.
The other reason that American's don't all have health insurance has to do with malpractice insurance. The best way to lower health costs is limit jury awards in malpractice suits. Case after case of people getting millions of dollars for non-life threatening misdiagnoses raise prices. Doctors have to pay inflated malpractice insurance rates, which is compensated for in the cost of procedures. The insurance companies cannot cover the entire cost of the visit, so they have to raise prices just to be solvent. This prices some people out of coverage.
In America, however, one can go to any county hospital for treatment, with no matter paid to debts to the hospital. If you can't pay, you don't, and are still not refused treatment.
It's not like we have gunshot victims bleeding to death because they can't get insurance.
Socializing medicine will chase students from medicine, chase doctors from the country, and end the high quality care we receive here in America. The best solution is for states to pool the uninsured and get into an affordable group plan through an insurance company. I pay less than 100 dollars a months for Blue Cross and Blue Shield Premium because the company I work for has thousands of employees. Pooling millions of the uninsured would allow for an even deeper rate cut.
