Oh?
Y’know, if I thought I could get a serious and informative debate with you about health care systems, contrasting the Canadian single-payer to an ACA-observing U.S. (or the U.S. without ACA, if that’s the discussion), I’d be happy to do so in GD. Thing is, I have no doubt whatsoever that fairly early in the process you’d incorrectly describe something in the Canadian system as a flaw, while misattributing same to liberal laziness or hatred of capitalism or some such nonsense, because you have shown a determined set of beliefs and anything that doesn’t fit those beliefs must be a lie or a conspiracy or a deception of some kind.
IF such a discussion was to take place, I’d want to start by drawing a distinction between medical science and medical insurance. I’ll cheerfully acknowledge that specific American institutions like, for example, Johns Hopkins, represent world peaks in medical treatment, and top-tier medical research does indeed go on in American universities, and top-tier pharmacological research does indeed go on in American laboratories. Further, if one is a wealthy American, I’ll cheerfully acknowledge that the widest possible range of medical treatments will be available to one, including cutting-edge therapies unavailable elsewhere.
As a follow-up to the above, I’d cite Canadian medical stats, starting with life expectancy, but also infant mortality, survival rates after various cancer treatments. etc. as well as describe top-rated Canadian hospitals, Canadian medical schools (and I cheerfully admit their overall numbers are small, even with a per-capita adjustment, compared to the U.S.) … all to establish that, for most purposes, the level of medical treatment available to an average Canadian is comparable to that available to an average American. At the very least, it’s clearly not going to be in even the remotest sense comparable to the analogy you offered of two islands, one of which has 10 Harvard-educated Nobel-winning doctors (and an population with bad habits) and the other a single graduate of an Nigerian online veterinary school (and a population with good habits). Frankly, I feel * embarrassed* for you, if you honestly thought that was a good analogy to the U.S. and Canada.
For a serious population comparison, I daresay the eating habits, sleeping habits, working habits and recreational habits of Americans and Canadians are closely comparable. For the most part, we work the same kinds of jobs, watch the same kinds of movies and TV shows, eat the same kinds of foods. I might want to break it down a little - compare urban Canadians to urban Americans, and rural Canadians to rural Americans - to get fairer results. I’d be open to suggestion as to how to go about doing this. Possibly, I could picture limiting the comparison to Canadians who live within 100 miles of the border (that is to say, most of them) and Americans who live in the northern contiguous-48 states, to rule out climate as a factor.
Anyway, after establishing all that - that this is not going to be like comparing a First-World population in a temperate zone to a Third-World one in a tropical zone - we could begin a more serious discussion on medical insurance and medical financing generally. My starting premise would probably be along the lines of defending the single-payer system as an efficient way of ensuring care to all or nearly-all (I’m cheerfully prepared to recognize the limitations) of a population. My evidence would be stats on health-care spending and results (including stats like life expectancy). If an early response is a reflexively derisive “LOL! Governments doing something EFFICIENTLY?! LOL! ROFL!” then I’ll know I’m wasting my time.
The gist is that in your case, I’m confident my time will be wasted.