What do Canadians think when Americans rant about their health care?

[Dylan]

There a quite a few political pundits and such in States who talk about how horrible Canada's "socialized" health care is, and how Canadians secretly want ours, and so on and so forth.

I was just wondering what Canadians think when Americans rant about their health care, do you find it offensive? amusing? or you just don't care?

[DD]

I find it amusing when American political pundits who have probably never been to Canada say we want US style health care. The majority of Canadians I talk to do not want the same system the US has, and if these pundits had ever been to Canada and talked to us they would know that.

[3825633lAKAToke]

LOL.

To be honest, a little bit of all of the above, depending on my mood & the nature of the rant.

To say there are NO problems with our system would be an outright lie. Anywhere there is money to be made, there will be those abusing it. Anywhere government & bureaucracies are involved there will be waste. Anywhere people are involved there will be bias & prejudice & human error.

I think, and many of us would agree - pretty much most I ever spoken with on the topic - that it is the concept we love. Tommy Douglas, Keifer Sutherland's grandpa, brought it to us....free universal health care for all is a basic human right, like drinking water. We may not love the current delivery of this concept, but we love the concept.

Now, when peeps are desperate, they will go to desperate lengths & pay anything to get better. That's human nature. Leads to many getting conned with fake cures, leads to other abuses....

Equal care for all.

When my maternal granny was very sick, second bout of cancer, she'd beaten lung cancer 10 years before, the doctors & hospital pushed for no heroic measures.....the community resources would be better spent on younger people.....I found their logic flawless, but insensitive under the circumstances, and that was very difficult to swallow at the time....my dad lost his leg to diabetes, then his life shortly there after from complications....he was shipped back to the rural hospital (with fewer resources) in our opinion too early, a couple of days after surgery....the rural hospital did not have the equipment to do a resuscitation....if there had been enough staff & resources he should have been kept in the city hospital until he was out of the woods.....so no, not perfect....every family probably has suffered a loss due to the imperfections of our system.

Do I secretly want to die of something entirely curable because I can't afford the treatment? Do I want to be in debt for the rest of my natural life because I gave birth? Hells no.

For the life of me I can't figure what is so damn malignant about wanting equal health care for all your citizens.

Seeing American panties in such a knot about what looks like a no brainer to me is amusing at times.

Dissing our system without understanding it & adding wild claims is offencive.

However....no offence intended, our system does have many issues.....remote communities are not getting the services they deserve.....Aboriginal peeps or those the police would call "Aboriginal in appearance" frequently do not get the same level of service in an ER & I know of two deaths in my city directly attributed to this....one from the news & one I knew personally that never made the news....so I would much rather spend my energy focussing on our system than caring about yours, so mostly I'm apathetic about the fuss in the US....

And that's the honest truth....