You’re interpreting my perhaps loosely phrased description in the wrong way. I’m not implying a class hierarchy where everyone is at the top, I’m implying a health care system that strives to provide everyone with the best possible level of care. And the experience of European countries, Canada, and every advanced country on earth is that this is achievable. Private or personal funding may result in more comfortable rooms and large screen TVs, but the operative principle that’s been very successful and is an essential principle of civilized society is that it should never result in better health outcomes.
Canada achieves solid essential health care services for all, and non-emergency services are just fine, thank you. As for getting a family doctor, I understood that GPs were about as scarce or even scarcer in the US than in Canada, where both countries have issues because of the migration to specialization. Certainly this statistic would bear that out, but it’s just something I casually Googled just now – the Canadian Medical Association claims 114 GP physicians per 100K population, the CDC claims 47.2 per 100K for the US. There may be some inconsistency in those metrics, but really, I highly doubt that there’s any vast discrepancy disfavoring Canada in the GP population, but if you have evidence for it, bring it on. I can usually see my GP the same day or the next if I need to.
I might phrase it differently. There are various ways to prioritize which health care goes to which person.
One way–the American way–is to say that the best health care goes to the person with the most wealth. There are exceptions to this policy, e.g., Medicare, emergency rooms, etc., but failing these government programs, our system declares that people with more money get priority.
Another way–the way of most other democracies–is to say that the best health care goes to the person with the greatest need. Under this system, there’s a starting assumption that everyone’s life is equally valuable, and priorities are set by medical protocols, not by the flow of money.
There are arguments to be made for either system, of course. Ultravires is correct that it’s nearly impossible to give everyone the same. The question is, what’s our starting value? Do we value most the freedom of a free exchange, where people choose where their wealth goes? Or do we value most the dignity of human life, where all people deserve medical care no matter their wealth?
I’m firmly in the latter camp, but it doesn’t mean I can’t understand the arguments for the former.
Yeah…I think a lot of these claims you hear about Canadian health care are from people who only have experience in one or the other system and think their experience is unusual. For example, I remember one thread where Sam Stone was telling us how in the Canadian system now, you hardly get to see your doctor for any time at all and then he quoted an amount of time he gets to see them that I can’t quite recall but it was something like 10 or 15 minutes. And, my reaction (in the U.S. health care system) was: “Good, God! If I saw my doctor for that long on a visit, I have no idea what I would do with all that time! I’d have to start talking about the weather or something.”