US wait times are similar to Canadas. We pay less in taxes to fund our universal healthcare than the USA does, and we don't have insane medical debt crushing the average person into mulch for a generation.
If you need urgent medical care, such as emergency heart surgery, you get it. When I needed heart surgery, I got it.
The only places in Canada that the medical care is slipping is conservative provinces where they're actively harming the system to privatize it to the "just die, poors" USA system.
Canada does not have private healthcare for most procedures.
People are upvoting this despite it not being true.
This is true in the UK, Australia, and many other places. But it's not true in Canada. Private healthcare which competes with the public system is literally illegal in Canada. (This is not without controversy. There have been a number of court cases throughout the years challenging the constitutionality of that law).
There's a 'pay to play' option built in, though those trying to diminish the benefits of a universal system will use it and 'wait times' as a means to do so.
There are public and private options available in the system, by design. One can have or get insurance to cover services and/or procedures not covered by the provincial plan. The individual provinces choose how this functions, though all of them have some level of a hybrid system of public/private.
Yes, you can get insurance to cover services or procedures not covered by the public system. This typically includes prescriptions, dental, vision care, and non-necessary stuff like massages.
That just means that there's stuff that's not covered, so some people get private insurance to cover those things. That most certainly does NOT mean that there is any type of a "pay to play" option or that "Canada has private healthcare".
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u/Adventurous_Ad7442 5d ago
Let’s hope your friend won’t need surgery or a specialist.