Like the US, about half of Canadians are strongly opposed to taxes. Our health care system is about as good as it can be, with the budget we have for it.
How long do you wait for eg. a tooth filling? Or if you notice a dark spot on the skin, to get it checked up by a dermatologist? So the minor things, that can get messy real fast if you dont deal with them fast?
If the main argument against nationalized healthcare is that so many more people can get healthcare that your minor condition gets bumped down in priority... well yeah, the point is that many more people can get treatment for major problems!
I pay insurance for my car (it's mandatory here - the mandatory part only covers damages on other peoples cars when you're the guilty one). I also pay (extra) for windshield repair, and when a small rock on the highway breaks my windshield, i go to one of the preaproved service centers (or do the paperwork to do it somewhere else), get the glass replaced, and go home after ~30 minutes.
I also pay for dental in my mandatory government insurance (no way to opt-out), and when i see a dark spot on my tooth, i call the government dentist, and they tell me to come in six months, at 11.30am on a tuesday. I could wait that long, but by that time, my tooth could get worse, and a simple drill-drill-fill-fill might end up as an extraction or worse. So basically, I either have to pay for a private dentist to do it (full price, not just the difference in price compared to a government dentist), or wait six months and risk it. Either way, i pay for dental, that I don't get.
Same for eg. dermatologists... find a spreding dark spot on the skin.. wait six months+ (probably more now, due to the plague), or pay 70eur and get it checked out the next day. Wait six months, and a simple burn-off could be cancer.
I pay for roads and i dont have a car, i don't get a rebate if i walk. Etc.
Bad teeth impacts you and you alone.
On the other hand, your nation, state, city, employer, etc are all run by people who were educated in this country. You directly benefit from roads every time you buy goods from any business, etc.
Do you think disease ridden population carrying ringworms earns well, shows up for work reliably and are good customers?
If healthcare was left to free market completely, we'd see return of The Plague!
> If healthcare was left to free market completely
What evidence of this do you have? Because, in the US, healthcare largely is free market and we do not have the return of any plague or anything similar. In fact, it's free markets that bore out the vaccination the world is using to fight the current pandemic.
Part of the reason healthcare is so expensive in the US is because people cannot afford to get preventative care and so they wait until they are basically dying and then go to the emergency room. If they couldn’t afford $100 to see a doctor before, they can’t afford the $100k the hospital will bill them so they just go bankrupt and the hospital loses it all. The hospital covers these expected delinquent accounts by charging more to people with insurance. The insurance covers these higher costs by charging higher premiums. You are already paying for other people, you’re just doing it the expensive way because there’s so many for-profit organizations in between you and those other people.
Our vaccine deployment differs by state, city, county. 30yos are getting vaccinated in a bordering state while 64yos are not getting vaccinated 20mi away. It depends on who you know, luck, bureaucracy, and how lucky you are with your particular county. I'm in Virginia now and no vaccine opportunity yet. Five miles away in Maryland my friends have received the vaccine.
Imagine this for every dental implant, sprained shoulder, etc.
I'm pretty sure universal healthcare works, but i'm not sure how to get our country to the point where it is at least fair for everyone.
Emphasis on the "minor operations". Things are prioritised by need and urgency, so naturally you end up with a long tail of non-urgent, minor operations.
> how the wealthy/elites of Canada fly into the US for treatments
There's a reasonable argument here that the US system has advantages for the wealthy. Generally however this is seen as undesirable.
> Everyone in the US already does have access to healthcare
There's several issues with this statement. The first is that 32.8 million people (12% of the population) were uninsured in 2019[1]. The second is that even if you have health insurance on paper, it's generally prohibitively expensive to use, only kicking in once a deductible is reached that will bankrupt you regardless (40% of Americans can't cover a surprise $400 expense [2] and these deductibles can run into several $1000). The reality for many is that if they're sick, they tough it out because going to a doctor may cause them financial ruin.
> above a certain income level you're expected to shop for your own. I much rather prefer that instead of it coming out of my paycheck in another mandatory tax without choice of provider.
I'm not sure what your experiences have been, but the only context where I've been able to "shop for my own" provider was when an employer happened to offer one of two providers in their available plans, which wasn't always. Functionally I had almost no choice in my health insurance coverage short of specifically finding a job that offered what I wanted, which given my priveliged position as a software engineer would be possible but would be laughable for most professions. Functionally, my health insurance was a mandatory tax without a choice of provider, it just wasn't a tax paid to the government.
I should also note that I now live in Australia, where we have a universal public system where I am still able to choose my doctor and other care providers. In fact, I feel that I have far more choice here than I ever did while living in the US.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-insurance.htm [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cov...