I’m assuming that any of my American friends on here are intelligent enough to have informed opinions on health care, but here’s some food for thought.
I had life threatening cancer. For over four years. And thanks to Canadian style, “socialist” health care, I didn’t have to declare bankruptcy.
Over the course of the four years, I was in hospital for around 56 days for recovering from surgeries, having chemo, etc. I paid nothing.
When I was first diagnosed, I had five weeks of radiation treatments, five days a week. The started two days after my diagnosis. I paid nothing.
I had five major surgeries in those four years, each lasting anywhere from two to eight hours, and involving surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and post-op care. I paid nothing.
After the first surgery on my leg, I had to go to physiotherapy for nine months to learn to walk again, the first four months of which were two hours a day, five days a week. I paid nothing.
There were innumerable nurses caring for me during my hospital stays, round the clock. I paid nothing.
To help me deal with how I was feeling, my orthopedic surgeon referred me to a psychiatrist who worked in the hospital who helps cancer patients. I saw him every month for most of those four years. I paid nothing.
They rebuilt my leg with a then state of the art prosthesis worth tens of thousands of dollars, then in the revision replaced the upper half. I paid nothing. The orthopedic surgeon, one of the top men in his field in Canada, I paid nothing.
My GP who caught the problem first, I paid nothing. The Sports Medicine Clinic where he referred me, I paid nothing. The knee specialist, I paid nothing.
And just in case you are wondering, I received the best care any person could have, at three of the top hospitals in the country.
So, take that, little miss “boo hoo, I had a <benign> brain tumour and had to wait because socialized medicine is evil” You’re a sellout and a liar.
And if you question the wisdom of socialized medicine, remember that if you were in Canada, and you went through what I did, you’d still have your house and your savings. Think about the hundreds of thousands of dollars I didn’t have to pay. And that you wouldn’t have to pay either.