Healthcare in Canada Wasn’t Always This Way
From time to time, one sees vulgar comments on right-of-center American forums declaring that Canada is a socialist hellhole. Often, this criticism is based on the fact that Canada has a system of so-called socialized medicine. On reading such comments one gets the impression that the vision that they mean to evoke is that of a vast array of death committees lining up helpless citizens to be turned into Soylent Green.
Canada is not there yet.
Canada does indeed have a system of government-run universal healthcare, but it’s not at all what these uninformed American commenters envision. Arguably, two decades ago Canada’s health care system was better than America’s. Back then Canada had better morbidity and mortality statistics, better accessibility, and much cheaper drugs at less overall cost than America. That is why the American Left advocated that that was the system that the United States should adopt. (READ MORE: Britain Allows Child to Travel to Vatican Hospital for Treatment)
That was then. That ship sailed long ago.
Although it’s true that in 1993 when Hilary Clinton was tasked with reforming American healthcare Canada’s single-payer system was worth emulating, by the time Bernie Sanders was ballyhooing it during his first presidential campaign in 2016, it was already in decline.
In Practice, Canada Has a Two-Tier Healthcare System
The idea constantly promoted by the government in Canada is that Canada’s healthcare system is single-tier with equal access and equal treatment for all. At this point, this is largely a myth. Today recent statistics indicate that more than a million Canadians are waiting for operations that are scheduled months away. Millions more do not have and are unable to sign up with a family doctor for the simple reason that most general practitioners have full practices and are not taking new patients.
There are several different ways this is playing out. If you need an operation and are well-to-do and you feel that your condition is life-threatening or it is causing you serious discomfort then you go abroad for the operation, usually to the United States or Europe, cost be damned. On the other hand, if you are smart enough and well-informed you can game the system. (READ MORE: The Beginning of the End for the Soros Revolution?)
A few months ago, I woke up one day and my vision was somewhat distorted, which is to say I was seeing “floaters.” I called my optometrist who has a private practice and got an appointment for later that day. After examining me she told me that I had a torn retina and that I should have a laser operation to get it fixed as soon as possible lest the condition deteriorate and I lose the vision in that eye. We both knew that to get a referral to an ophthalmologist who could do the job I would first have to get to see my family doctor. That could take weeks instead of a day or two as in the past and then the referral might take more weeks or even months to materialize during which time I might lose the vision of that eye. Instead, she instructed me to go directly to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital with a good ophthalmology department, that way I could get the problem fixed in fairly short order. That’s how the system works and that’s how you game it. After being examined by the ophthalmologist on call at the emergency ward I would be able to book an appointment with a staff eye surgeon for the very next day. Everything worked just fine — but only because I knew how to game the system. Substantively, then, Canada now has a two-tier system, one tier for the well-off and well-informed, and one for everyone else.
Going through this process was itself a bit of an ordeal because, for several reasons, the emergency wards of major Canadian hospitals are something else. First, those million Canadians who do not have family doctors take their problems to emergency wards, which are packed not only with urgent cases but also more routine ones such as mine. Moreover, even though by the time I got there the pandemic lockdowns were over, this hospital was still clinging to pandemic protocols and I had to sit for about seven hours wearing a mask in a little plexiglass booth. Finally, these emergency wards also serve as a depository for homeless people who are brought there by police when they are having a violent psychotic episode. While I was waiting to be examined there was one such person in the ER who had been strapped to a gurney and kept on hollering “My balls are on fire! My balls are on fire!” As much as one ought to pity such a person it does make one’s ER experience even more unpleasant. In the event, there were several security guards present who spent some time discussing what to do. Finally, they and one of the hospital staff donned hazmat suits and went over and gave the poor man a shot of some super-tranquilizer, which quickly calmed him down.
This is what Canada’s “single-tier” healthcare system looks like. But the government continues to cling to it as the prime jewel in Canada’s social safety net crown.
Canada’s Problem Isn’t Funding But How It Spends
What has caused this decline? There are many different factors. A few years ago I learned about one of them up close when I set up a volunteer program in one of Toronto’s major hospitals in which we brought in musicians to entertain patients and staff. At that time the administrative head of volunteers informed me that during the decades that she had worked there, the hospital had decreased its number of beds ostensibly to devote resources to research. Meanwhile, as frontline services were being cut back the highly-paid hospital administration was becoming increasingly top-heavy, and more and more money was being spent on jaw-jaw and less on patient care.
Of course, research is important but there shouldn’t be a trade-off between it and patient care. It’s not how much money you have but how you spend it. This was brought home to me when I was in Israel last October shortly after the Gaza pogrom. Israel and Canada are both prosperous countries with almost exactly the same per capita GDP. When I went to a demonstration in Jerusalem with a cousin she tripped and fell and broke her elbow. When we got back to her apartment, she picked up her phone and was able to immediately get a call through directly to her doctor. By the end of their conversation, he had booked an appointment for her to come in three hours later for x-rays — this in a country whose trauma units were still being overburdened by the events of Oct. 7. In Canada, unless the situation was life-threatening, one could never get this sort of immediate care. Israel has a population of about a quarter of Canada’s but aside from offering superior front-line care, it is well-known that it is a world leader in research and innovation. (READ MORE: The Demographic Winter of Our Discontent)
The only field of healthcare in which Canada is ahead of Israel is euthanasia. Although Canada was late to this game compared to some European nations such as the Netherlands and Belgium it has jumped ahead of everyone else in broadening the criteria for who is eligible for this treatment and has even contemplated euthanizing the mentally ill. The government has even taken to boasting how much money it has been saving by putting down an increasing number of eligible patients—which is chump change compared to what it is spending on top-heavy administration–so perhaps Canada will get to its Soylent Green moment before anyone else after all.
America has its own troubled healthcare system about which much has been written so there’s no point in comparing the two countries here. That being said Americans have no right to accuse Canada of being a socialist hellhole. As far as socialist diseases are concerned — DEI, BLM, CRT — they have all originated in the U.S. and in turn been exported to Canada. And by now there are many Canadians who wish that America would also export the cure for these cultural-Marxist maladies.
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