Not because I think most of you on my flist need it, but maybe you can link others to it. This is a great article addressing the myths about the Canadian health care system.

Debunking Canadian health care myths, in the Denver Post.

From it being financially impossible:

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.

Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

to it being too bureaucratic:

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

to wait times:

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.

There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

All these ones in particular have been driving me *nuts* to read over and over again.

( cut because I'm dissing the US a little more than I meant to and I mean to subject my flist to without giving them the choice of clicking )

NO.

(And this happens all the time. People. I know the US is the biggest and bestest country in the whole wide world, but that does not make you A WHOLE CONTINENT.)

(Er, context: a lot of webpages, particularly those selling things, make you choose your country before seeing the webpage. When you hover over the US flag at the sims 3 website, it says "North America".)