As a Canadian living in the USA… the efficiency of the US healthcare system in comparison to Canada’s is INCREDIBLY overstated. From my experience it has been no more efficient, but a HELL of a lot more expensive and insanely depressing.

Honest answer?

If you’ve lived through Canadian HC for a few decades, you’ll notice a few things:

1. It’s no where near as good as it was in the past.

2. It’s broken now after Covid and the apathetic response to the stress upon the system.

3. The conservative governments (mostly provincial) are purposely not putting monies where needed (eg more staff), and underfunding everything in it so the system breaks. This way, their associates can swoop in and take over with “more efficient” and faster HC services - and they can then begin raking in the enormous profit margins seen in the private US system (many of whom are their ‘associates’).

Canadians in most provinces are currently being slow-walked into private, for profit HC.

If you don’t see this. You’re truly blinded by your comforting illusions of what Canada is now, compared to 20-30 years ago. Shit, even 10.

Two-tiered HC coning right up!

Healthcare is provincial here so it varies. I'm in Ontario, the largest province in Canada. Hospital emergency wait rooms have been fairly short in my limited experience. Accessing a doctor is free but getting a family doctor can be difficult. My daughter was delivered at a hospital in a smaller city of 50k. The staff and amenities were great. They had lactation consultants on staff etc. All free to use.

My biggest concern with the healthcare system in Canada is medical staff burnout. I hope they get the staff get the support they need

I'm an American ex-pat living as a permanent resident in Canada, and nothing irks me more than listening to idiots from back home arguining with my about the efficacy of our healthcare because "they know a guy who has told them horror stories". You don't know shit, and if you really do know someone telling you horror stories about Canadian healthcare, you're most likely speaking to an overprivledged conservative cunt who lives a lavish life on his oil money whilst somehow convincing himself he has it bad purely because Trudeau is in power.

ER wait times? Sure. But no worse than in the States. And unlike there I don't have a fuck ton of medical debt, like 5k ER bills for an ultrasound of all things. Fuck me for having inexplicable pain in my abdomen once that never amounted to anything but debt. My mistake.

My mom was diagnosed with stage 1 cancer this year at her bi-annual check by her doctor. Within 1 month she had a biopsy and surgery to remove the cancerous tumour. She was also put on an experimental treatment to boost her immune system for the couple of weeks she had to wait to get surgery.

She’s now cancer free. Total cost? $0.

I will be very less than nice to anyone who advocates to get rid of our system.

Put it this way. My wife just got a something equivalent to a heart attack. Ambulance got here in 5 minutes. She spent 3 nights in the hospital, got all the tests, one of Canada's best docs in the field... it cost $135 for something to do with the ambulance.

They saved her life, she's seeing a specialist, figured out the meds and prepped if/when it happens again.

Everything was seamless. I don't know how it could have been better.

I've lived in both US and Canada.

In Canada, my mother had cancer stayed in a private room for weeks until she died and we only paid for the phone bill for her room and parking. I didn't get a bill from the hospital at all. No claims on insurance.

I had a baby in 2021 and again my wife had a private room while she recovered from her C section and my infant was in the NICU for a week. No bill from the hospital, no claims on insurance. Just paid for parking.

My wife who is type 1 diabetic had 100% of her needs covered through the ontario healthcare system.

I hear stories that in Ontario you have to wait for non-urgent care due to Premier Doug Ford not paying nurses enough, but I have not seen this personally.

I had work coverage that provided dental, vision, and drug coverage if needed.

In the US, I'm 100% dependent on work provided benefits AND I have to pay $4k a year for those benefits. Wife went for some routine work done and it was covered by work insurance. In ontario it would have been a no cost thing too, no dealing with insurance. We wouldn't have waited in Ontario, we didn't wait here either.

There seem to be waits here for specialists. Haven't had to go to the hospital for anything yet.

I had a totally benign fatty mass attached to the back of my skull right where it meets my neck that was a minor irritation and made me uncomfortable with short haircuts. I mentioned it to a doctor during a checkup and a month later it was removed. I'm sporting a short haircut today. It cost me pennies on my taxes.

It's overburdened. We have a huge labour shortages for nurses and doctors as the boomers retire without enough replacements. Finding a regular family doctor takes a long time. When Covid spikes, the hospital staff are run ragged. But they make a nice living helping people, there are worse fields to work in.

When you need medical attention you get it. If you need surgery today, you get surgery today. If you need surgery or a specialist but there's no rush, you're on a wait list that can be months or even over a year long.

Three weeks ago I had abdominal pain. I went to Emergency and was diagnosed with appendicitis, which had fully ruptured. I was transferred to another hospital in the same city, and had an operation that night. Due to complications I was in hospital for 8 days. The biggest expense during this entire time was the parking fees when my family came to visit. I left with a prescription, and no bill. Yes, some of our wait times are stupid long, but in this case I got what I needed promptly and was not rushed home until I was deemed ready.

I've had cancer for 7 years. Done 2 rounds of chemo, 1 round of radiation, surgery twice (colostomy and then tumour removal) and currently am finishing my 36th month of experimental immunotherapy, before another round of chemo/radiation starting first week of October.

When I needed emergency surgery for the colostomy, I was admitted immediately and had surgery in hours.

Last week they decided they needed to do more to tackle 1 problematic lymph node, hence the chemo/radiation scheduled for October. So I had 2 CT scans last week to track growth and plan for radiation. They wanted it sooner, but my last dose of immunotherapy is Oct 3, so chemo/radiation is put off until Oct 4.

So far I've had to pay for parking and some meds.

Cancer 0/10 stars. Canadian Healthcare for me 10/10 stars.

My retired mom had cancer a few years back, pretty bad. Surgery, chemo, radiation therapy, hair fell out and wore a wig. The only expense was for parking. Even the wig was provided by a charity adjacent to cancer care. Surgery, one to three weeks in the hospital, treatments spanning over a year, costing a couple hundred dollars in parking fees. No stress about losing her home due to hospital expenses.

I'd take that over what can be had in America any time.

Not perfect, but good. It could be way better if people would stop voting for Con Premiers.

Honestly, not that great. In Ontario, health care has been heavily affected by Doug Ford's Bill 124, which capped nurse's wages at 1% a year for 3 years, causing horribly long wait times and understaffing at hospitals

ITT:

People born in Canada: Not great / has problems

US expats living in Canada: It’s mother’s milk

Still using "at least we're not the USA!" to excuse a dumpster fire of a healthcare system, as we have been for years.

It is important to note that there isn't a "Canadian" healthcare system, per se. It is largely a provincial jurisdiction. So while Manitoba sees outrageous wait times, hallway medicine, nurse shortages, and people dying in ER waiting rooms because they don't have a GP, I can't speak for every province in the country.

Anecdotally, my experience is... OK. I'm lucky to have a family doctor that I've had since childhood. That said, I've moved multiple times since then, and I haven't been able to find a doctor in any of my new communities, so if I ever need to see a GP, its an hour drive back to my hometown.

Where I am the system is a bit overwhelmed but it sure beats having to go into massive debt or having to have healthcare insurance tied to employment.

It's there if I need it, and that's all I need honestly.

It's good but aggressively underfunded.

You know... this one is really complex.

Nobody feels hesitation to seek the help they need based on funds, but now due to access or wait times.

It wasn't always like this, in the 2000s it was marvellous, I remember having a medical scare, showed up at the ER, got triaged right into a doctor because it was time sensitive, saw the doc, got an examination, got cleared, and discharged $0.

Now I feel apprehensive about seeing my local clinic for a sprained ankle.

Now you may wonder why? Is the system failing? Well...yes, and no.

In the last decade or so, we've seen a strong ultra-right push to "prove" the system is broken and we need to copy the way the US has it (so the politicians friends that own pharma services etc... get lucrative deals from the govt) by sabotaging it directly and saying "look, it's broken"

One very clear instance, in my province (AB) during the biggest health emergency we've seen in our life time (COVID) our health minister made it his life's mission to piss off the medical community, under funding programs, firing component leaders in health and replacing them with yes men, and ripping up the doctor/nurse contracts.

What we've seen is docs and nurses leaving on droves as we doubled down on COVID hardship and squeezed the money out of frontline workers instead of going after the real problem which was lazy/corrupt middle management and supply chain problems.

To make things worse, our lab services was a crown-run (means it's a govt funded business, which can think bigger because they don't have to seek profits so hard, just efficient use of government funds) and they cancelled that contract to replace it with a private sector business.

Since this wait times for lab services have multiplied 10x, costs to consumers became a thing (it was free before) and all that government funding has disappeared.

So lose, lose, lose for the People.

So it's gotten worse, because the people in charge at the government are gifting, and killing it on purpose.

Would I trade it for your system? Not in a heartbeat, never, we just need to solve our fucked up politics and get people who care in power.

I had some abdominal issues that caused me to be buckled over in severe pain most of the day. I was unable to eat anything for days at a time. I was constantly feeling faint and nauseous and vomiting frequently. I did a video appointment with my doctor and he referred me to get an abdominal ultrasound.

It took about a week for the office to call me to schedule the tests. They told me the next available appointment they had was 8 months out.

I wound up getting better on my own after about 6 weeks of hell. I never did find out what was wrong.

BTW I’m not in Canada I’m in the good old US of A where we “Don’t experience delays” and have “Top-Notch Healthcare” thanks to out non socialized systems. I even had good insurance.

The healthcare system in the US is in shambles. It is extremely inefficient and absolutely resistant to any kind of change, because as bad as things are right now, change introduces risk that might make it worse. No matter how slim the chance or how much the benefits outweigh the risks, nobody wants to accept meaningful changes.

In BC the wait times are longer. But this is a symptom of the underfunding from federal and provincial governments. COVID was tough on the health care systems and they did a lot with what they had. Now should be the time to invest in the system and get it healthy again, but apparently more pipelines are the priority...

But overall I am satisfied for our system. It does not cost taxpayers an arm and a leg to fund it, and an emergency won't bankrupt someone. If you can get extended coverage such as with an employer then you pay minimal amounts for dental, medications, and paramedical services like physio or massage. From what I hear of the American system, I am shocked that there isn't some type of bare bones coverage for everyone. Sounds like a third world country from up here...

I have no experience with healthcare outside of Canada but as a kid I was always taken for routine checkups. As a young adult I don't do regular checkups but that's mostly because I'm lazy and finding a doctor who will agree to give you regular checkups can be difficult.

I did have an experience where my vision became blurred and I passed out. Someone called an ambulance for me and I was seen by a doctor as soon as I got to the hospital.

They did some basic tests and decided whatever it was it wasn't immediately killing me so they referred me to a neurologist. Their office setup some appointments for me over the next week and I had all kinds of tests run. Then I was sent to a heart specialist who scheduled me for a bunch of tests the next week. At the end of it all both specialist decided I was perfectly healthy and I passed out because of an anxiety attack. They recommended I be less stressed. Thanks!

Between the hospital visit, the tests by the neurologist, and the tests by the cardiologist, I paid $45 for the ambulance and got my clean bill of health in about 2 weeks.

The man who spread that misinformation actually admitted his guilt. I recommend you read this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Both good and severely lacking in areas.

The main issues are in access to care in a timely manner for issues that aren't urgent. It can take longer than you want to get treatment on issues that affect quality of life, but not actually life threatening if they aren't treated, whether it be getting into a specialist, getting tests like MRIs or surgery. We also have a significant shortage of family doctors in many places. The aging population and poor affordability of the country are significantly stressing the system though with little relief in sight.

But, if you are sick and need care, you will generally get it when you need it and it isn't going to cost you much as most things are covered by the province's medical services plan (medications, dental, vision, etc. will cost you unfortunately). Personally I've not had many issues when I've needed care. I see a specialist for a condition and other than waiting to get an initial appointment I haven't had to wait an unreasonable amount of time for tests or anything I've had done.

Not sure about Canada's HC system, but I do know lots of older Americans who love to complain and gripe about socialism and socialized medicine. All while being on Medicare and loving it.

It’s definitely underfunded as others have said, but I will also add this - I had the opportunity on Saturday this past weekend to spend some time in the local emergency room due to a sports related injury. I got X-rays and a CT scan done and saw a Dr. And the cost to me personally was about 6 hours. The waiting was a bit long but I brought a book and some snacks, and everyone was super nice.

Leaps and bounds better than the US system (then again, anything is) but I've had a number of chronic issues that Canadian doctors couldn't resolve in a year, went back to Mexico and it was fixed in days.

It's declined a lot, in the 90s it was considered some of the best in the world, it's far off from that now, so you'll hear a lot of complaining in canadian only spaces, but you'll find very very few canadians would take the American system over ours. Anything american media says about canadian Healthcare being bad is almost always untrue.

There is some political drama playing out. The pandemic obviously stressed the system, the (liberal) federal government (who primarily funds healthcare) wanted to give the (largely conservative) provincial governments money for Healthcare, but the provinces have been dragging their feet accepting money that can be only spent on Healthcare. Here in Ontario our premier is making obvious moves to make our Healthcare more private (while largely denying it), something largely unpopular but could be very profitable to particular people.

In my personal experience I have no complaints. I needed a urologist for some non urgent issues and that took 4months. But as a kid I hit my head and (it turns out coincidentally) started getting really severe headaches a few weeks later, I got seen by a neurologist within a day or saying I had a problem. In 2020 I broke my leg and was in and out of the hospital in less than an hour despite covid, had several follow uos without waits either.

I've lived in 4 provinces and one territory. There is a wide gamut of health care since provinces have much more say than the federal government. Alberta has been sone of the most efficient and quickest health care out of the places I've lived. Manitoba's pretty lackluster mostly in time it takes to get anything done, fairly inefficient.

Overall I think we have a pretty solid system. My first child was born via an emergency c section, the most I paid was I think $15 for the parking I believe plus another 100 ish bucks because we wanted a private room. My second was a planned c section due to pregnancy difficulties so again those pesky parking fees jumped up our cost there but didn't pay for the private room this time . Still got a private room but didn't pay anything for it.

I've been in for everything from x rays to surgery to stitches, and I love being able to walk out of the hospital with nothing more than a wave.

Is it perfect? Hell no, there's still a lot of room to improve. But hey isn't that true of everything?

Used to be excellent.

Then to many right wing pc corporate rim job loving capitalists got in power and very intentionally ruined the system so they could get their scum sucking pill pushing evil corporate friends to swoop in and save us with their private health care work.

Create a problem and then offer a paid solution to it.

I hope Ford and his crack smoking criminal croonies get the guillotine when the revolution comes.

One thing to bear in mind is that while federal funding is involved, every province manages its own healthcare system. As such, you can expect some variation depending on where you live.

I live in Ontario, as do most of my family members. My experience is that hospital care here has been top notch. I have never had a situation in which I felt myself or a family member was not getting everything they needed during a medical crisis.

It is more in everyday care situations where the system has some issues. The pandemic had a knack for revealing healthcare problems with laser focus wherever you were in the world. Here, it was in nursing homes where we saw super-spreading events. My mom's building alone saw 9 deaths in a single month. It's not really surprising. Our current conservative premier took it upon himself to find "efficiencies" in long-term care at the beginning of his term.

Where I live, there has also been a chronic family physician shortage. I know people who have been on the waiting list for over 5 years at this point. They can always go into walk-in clinic or the hospital out-patient centre, but still... I think there is a problem with medium-sized cities in Ontario that they are a bit too large to qualify as under-serviced communities and get more help from the province? They figure that since the city has a couple of major hospitals, it can't be under-serviced.

If I am in great pain or have been injured I just head to the emergency room. My only concern is how long I will have to wait to be seen which is based on urgency of the symptoms.

If you have a less severe or chronic problem it can take a few months to see various specialists or get non critical surgery. However again time is the only concern.

The only financial concerns come from over the counter medication for which there are programs for low income and extended coverage that is commonly covered by employers. Also most of these medications are cheaper in Canada vs the US as the provinces negotiate the costs. For an example an epi pen purchased without coverage of any kind is 6x cheaper in Canada than the US.

It is slow at times but I never have a financial concern during an emergency or that I need to go to a specific in network hospital like in the US.

Im in Newfoundland.

Wait times in the emergency room aren't too bad. Its very heavily triaged so if you go in with a major emergency you will basically be seen immediately, but if you go in with something minor you might have to wait a few hours, especially if there are any respiratory illnesses going around. Children and elderly patients struggling to breathe take priority over an otherwise healthy adult with a wound that just needs a few stitches.

Getting a family doctor can be difficult. There just aren't enough to go around.

Seeing a specialist will usually involve a long wait list (a few weeks to a few months depending on what they specialize in), so its best to book an appointment as soon as you can. You may have to travel to St.Johns so there might be some travel expenses. Growing up I had to see an ENT in St.Johns every summer for a checkup, so we just turned the visit into a camping trip.

Well, I wish I didn't have to pay for prescriptions or dental, even if my insurance covers most of it (and there are programs if you have none). Things could be better. Not nearly enough family doctors and wait times can be long if it's not imminently life threatening. But I do get peace of mind knowing that no matter what an unexpected major surgery won't financially hurt me.

All in all I look to the states and am thankful for what I have but we could be doing more.

As luck would have it, I was travelling in Las Vegas last year when I had sudden abdominal pain. Fortunately, I have travel health insurance from my work, so I went to the hospital. At that time I'd been inundated by how fucking AMAZING American healthcare is over anywhere else in the world.

I was admitted from the ER, spent a night in an overflow bed waiting for OR time, and had my operation and was discharged the following day. Just for fun, I also learned I had COVID during the intake process.

Comparing it to my experience with Canada's healthcare system, the only difference was I had to wait before being treated for a woman with a giant cart with a computer and papers and other shit to screen for my insurance to be sure I was eligible to receive care. They didn't want to treat me because my travel insurance was through another network, but they would treat me because this was deemed an emergency surgery.

Apart from that, it was essentially what I see in Canada:

• nursing staffing shortfalls
• poor communication inside the hospital (post-op team hadn't even been told I had COVID)
• "long" but acceptable wait for an emergency surgery
• standard diagnostics took a couple hours (bloodwork, CT, etc)

Some things were better:

• good parking at the hospital
• building and facilities were clean and seemed new

Some things were poorer:

• I was discharged with a prescription and told to stop at a pharmacy on the way home for painkillers. In Canada they would hand me a bag with the meds already dispensed.
• got a call from collections (in Switzerland?!) six months later asking why I hadn't paid my bill. It took far too much time to get them to understand they never gave me a bill nor access to one, and just claiming a bunch of $9999.99 expenses against my health insurance (which declined them due to lack of information) was insufficient

The whole experience left me really soured on American healthcare. It was "fine". I felt like it was free tier healthcare that nobody should be paying out of pocket for. The extra hoops and whistles SOLELY BECAUSE OF MONEY was depressing and awful.

My comparison, we just had a baby (back in Canada). I'm apparently going to have to pay a bill of a couple hundred bucks because we opted for a private room for postpartum care, but I didn't sign anything and haven't heard anything yet. I also had to pay for parking for several days, so add another maybe 50 bucks for all that. The only thing I can really complain about is how beat up the furniture in the hospital was, and how old the artwork on the wall was. Oh, and the family room that had 2 VCRs, no tapes, and a stack of DVDs (and no DVD player). Kind of petty stuff.

Tl;dr: they're the same in my eyes, except one cost $70,000 for 18 hours and the other cost me $500 for 3 days.

You poor Canadians don't get to enjoy the joy of financially ruinous hospital bills or depending on GoFundMe to afford medicine.

I pity you.

Well I can share my experience. I moved to Canada in 2020, I lived in Toronto for a while. In Toronto I was able to get a GP assigned to me fairly quick. I never had to use the services. Around mid of last year I moved to Ottawa for work. I been on the wait-list to get a GP assigned to me.

In the meantime my wife is recently pregnant, and we been sending out contact information to all the local hospitals hoping to get a gynecologist assigned. She is also on the same boat as me with regards to GP, being on a wait-list. As of now we are going to a private clinic for imaging, and so far everything looks good. But yeah I don't if it could be better, but it would help my anxiety if for her at-least they got the doctor assigned.

I can speak to this as I'm just going through it now.

I'm a young male in good health. I started having weird heart palpitations randomly starting last year. Had them four times, but they normally go away after 20ish mins. GP reviewed me, said it seemed fine, but to go in to ER if anything about them changed (ie more frequent, more intense, lasted longer).

Last friday they went on for an hour, so I went in. Entered at 11am.

Was triaged within 15mins, including an ECG. Once they confirmed it wasn't an active heart attack, I sat in the waiting room for two hours. I then saw a doctor, got a chest X-Ray, and bloodwork taken within 45mins. I proceeded to sit in the room hooked up to the vitals monitor for four hours while they ran my bloodwork, and the ER doc came back. He sent me a requisition for a cardiologist and told me to take aspirin until I saw the specialist.

I saw the Cardiologist on Wednesday, and he's explained he's not concerned given my lack of other risk factors. He's now sent me over for an ultrasound and 36hr halter monitor next Monday. He said unless something weird comes back or he wants another test, he won't see me again, and I should follow up with my GP 2 weeks after I finish the halter monitor.

So within 3 or 4 weeks I had a full range of tests done, and my biggest expense was $7.50 parking for the 30min cardiologist appointment, which I was actually unironically complaining about to my wife last night.

In my experience it's okay, but not amazing and slowly getting worse year after year for various reasons. Generally speaking if you have a life-threatening issue (heart failure, cancer, etc), you are taken care of as well as anyone could reasonably expect. But for anything else it can take forever to see a specialist and it's easy to get lost in the system that always seems to be running in capacity crisis mode. There are other countries that do a better job with the single-payer model, mostly those without provincial fiefdoms that insist on doing everything themselves and reinventing all the wheels for political reasons.

I don't want to give too much personal information but some time ago I went to the ER with symptoms not typical of a person of my age and was fast tracked through triage straight to tests, bloodwork, and scans. I was in the waiting room for maybe 5mins. Only thing I paid for was parking.

Excellent. Really, I go into the doctor when I need and get the treatment I need. Same story when I need emergency care.

If you need a specialist or something there can be a long wait, though. That has more to do with just hiring, I think, since all the GPs come from some other country and specialists are more likely to be local.

It can take a long time to get anything done. It's free, but it ain't fast.

I waited 6 months for an MRI, finally paid for it myself after the 3rd postponement. That gave enough evidence for a spinal fusion that took another year.

I've started to grow disillusioned. I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of resources used for every sniffle and booboo. Gods help you if you try to go to an Emergency Room. Even dripping blood, I've waited hours without so much as a paper towel offered.

If you have a family doctor it's great. It's also great for emergencies. The non-emergency pipelines often get clogged since not everywhere has adequate staff. Triaging happens. But I've rarely had a serious wait. And the hospitals have fixed my loved once numerous times, and I'm grateful to them, and glad we accrued no debt.

I've had an elective sinus surgery, a second (emergency) sinus surgery, an overnight hospital stay, a blood transfusion, an ambulance ride, different scans, a cast, crutches, a bunch of specialist follow-ups, physiotherapy, family doctor appoitments, and some drug prescriptions. Wow that sounds like a lot but it was just two separate incidents (I'll let you guess).

I did have to buy the crutches at $24, and while I'm still waiting for the ambulance bill I'll only be charged $40. Drug prescriptions aren't free for everyone, but my province has a program where they cover a portion depending on your income (free if you're low income or hit a drug-expense maximum for that year) which I benefited from when I was unemployed. Physiotherapy also isn't free, but I'm getting that covered through my workplace benefits. Other than those minor costs there's been nothing, which is crazy for me. I'm so thankful I'm not being buried under a mountain of debt, especially as one of the incidents happened when I was unemployed.

I tell people Canada is a great place to get cancer or have a heart attack. For chronic illnesses or trying to find family doctors is becoming very difficult. Medical staff is burning out and retiring or moving elsewhere. Things like hip surgeries can see 4 year plus waiting lists and medical costs are increasing significantly for all governments. To a lesser extent, leading edge procedures are not available. The system is seems close to a breaking point from most of the people I know in the medical industry.

I would say it is better than the US model but not by a great deal. If your illness is not immediately life threatening it can be years to get treatment. In that time you can lose hundreds of thousands in wages and many people often are in the same situation as being financial broke regardless.

Manitoba: not bad when you can see a doctor. Wait times are atrocious, so hopefully you don’t have something that’ll kill you in less than a couple months. Getting a family doctor is a pain between the extra long time it takes to find a family doctor and the frequency with family doctors leaving for other provinces. Rural ERs are often closed due to lack of doctors wanting to work in a rural area.

I guess it’s “free” (if you consider paying with your taxes free), but it is usually quite a bit cheaper than American healthcare.

As for the politics of it, it was like this with an NDP government, and it’s like this with a Conservative government. Both are incompetent.