Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began a US-Canada economic summit designed to improve his country’s economic climate.
While the current state of America's healthcare system is by no means anywhere close to perfect, that doesn't mean that looking towards single payer or other more socialized systems will result in a better outcome. Canada is a case in point.
Many have pointed to Canada as a model that The U.S. should follow. This is easy to do if you focus only on the benefits and completely ignore the problems. However, an honest look at the state of healthcare in Canada might lead to a different conclusion.
The promise of Canadian healthcare is that it is "free" for all. But what good is free if you can't get see a doctor or even receive emergency care at a hospital? As this article points out, Canadians face serious difficulties getting a primary care physician (one in six do not have one) and then even if they have one, less than half can get an appointment in a timely manner. An even scarier statistic is that in 2023, 1.3 million people abandoned emergency room visits because the wait was too long.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect with the Canadian healthcare system is the wait for medically necessary treatment (you know, for things like heart bypass surgery for instance). This wait has nearly doubled since 1993 and is now 27 weeks on average. Let's also not forget that "free" really isn't free. Taxes are higher than they have ever been in Canada and much of that tax money goes into the healthcare black hole. Yes, the U.S. system has serious problems. That doesn't mean that it should be completely abandoned for something that is arguably worse in many ways.
Source: Canada’s Ailing National Healthcare Is Not a Model for America - FEE