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Irbricksceo t1_je8m5tj wrote

Reply to comment by throwawaydanc3rrr in ELI5: What is Universal Healthcare by Thegreatcornholio459

That’s a matter of funding, there is no reason we couldn’t fund it enough to get rid of all waits. But, for the record, people DO wait years for healthcare here too. I’ve been doing it. The difference is we wait because we can’t afford it. They triage based on need, we triage based on income.

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throwawaydanc3rrr t1_je9hygo wrote

>That’s a matter of funding, there is no reason we couldn’t fund it enough to get rid of all waits.

Yes there is. A country only has so much money, and they have to decide how to spend it. Canada has a population of 39 million and it has as many MRI machines in the entire country as there are in the state of Tennessee with a population of 7 million.

Do you think that Canada would like to have as many MRI machines per capita as Tennessee? Sure they would! Why do they not? They cannot afford it.

Canadian healthcare does triage based on need, but they also triage based upon availability of resources. Hip replacements generally impact older people, and in some Canadian provinces the wait time for hip replacement is greater than 80 weeks. Statistically speaking that means there are people dying before they can get the hip replacement.

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Irbricksceo t1_je9rrqp wrote

That sounds like an issue that they should probably get working on then. If govs spent money in a way better suited to helping the people, and with a more logical tax structure, they absolutely could do it. I'm not saying canada's Healthcare system is some perfect model right now, it absolutely isn't, with many a flaw, But I'd still take it over the system here, where every life choice I ever make is built around minimizing the number of doses I'm likely to miss anyway. And I fully believe, with all my heart, that it is easier to fix a system that, at least in theory, exists to provide healthcare to all, than it is to fix one that is supposed to be profitable. I view profiting off healthcare as a moral failure.

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