Interesting. In every European country I know of, the private option is still available. Just vastly cheaper and more beneficial due to having to compete with a public option which covers basic necessities, surgery etc.

Is this quality improvements including or ignoring the 30-ish percent rejection rate of the most popular healthcare system, including such gems as insulin and pre-authorizations refusing surgery for necrotic tissue when “maybe they could PT it, have you tried?”

Same here in the UK. If you need to see a specialist, you regularly have to wait months, assuming you can even get a referral in the first place.

There are private options for lots of things in Canada, depending on the province.

Without data on what proportion of people are denied and what the consequences are, this isn’t a good faith argument.

On the flip side, cases that would get care in Canada are denied in the USA by private insurance. Private options are far outside the means of most people.

Does American private insurance pay for everything? And if you say "but they can pay out of pocket", well Canadians can come to America and pay out of pocket too.

The private option is medical tourism to Buffalo or whatever.

I don't know about Canada, but here in Spain you have both. You have public health guaranteed, but many people also have different levels of private coverages, usually to get quicker appointments.

As I understand Medicaid, it would just be open Medicaid for 100% of the US population regardless of the income, remove Medicare (they are now under Medicaid), leave the private sector as it is. Do you think Medicaid is too slow, too low quality, too terrible in general? Pay for private insurance, but you can still go to Medicare if needed.

The number of ridiculous claims in this thread...

First off, all Canadian provinces are different. Here in Quebec, there is a absolutely a private option. Not everyone likes that it exists, but most people seem to like having that option.

Canadians live better for longer on average (for cheaper healthcare overall). Any other metric is just a misguided attempt to justify the US status quo, which has nothing going for it unless you're rich.

I think the tradeoff is that in the US, on average one gets to spend about $4000 more per year and live about 3 years less when compared to Canada.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_vs_h...

I'm in Canada. The only time I ever needed a doctor in my life it was denied. I ended up having an issue that took ~5 years to resolve, which could have been prevented easily by any competent doctor in a 30 minute session.

I'm originally from Mexico. With what I have paid in tax here over the years I can afford to set up and operate my own small hospital over there, with new equipment, this is not an exaggeration.

"Free" healthcare, as with many other free things, turns out to be the most expensive kind of healthcare. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't really know what they're talking about or they're just stupid.

What could work, imo, and since we're all giving opinions here, is private healthcare with a ceiling on profits. Let players take 2x-5x, but not 50x which is what they do now, bring and enforce usury laws into healthcare.

My dad, in the US on Medicare (one of the government funded systems), was denied a test. Because we have the option and had the money, he went and got the test himself on his own dime. That kicked off a series of events that led to a quadruple bypass, avoided an impending heart attack, and likely added many years to his life and his ability to remain and functioning member of society.

While I love the idea of never having to think about health care costs for a variety of reasons, I do like that some services are available to anyone with a wallet and not locked behind government controlled gates.

There's problems with every system, but as a Canadian, it doesn't sound like you know anything about our health care.

This is what is never mentioned. Quality of care, access to cutting edge treatments, timely access to care are never discussed when moving to universal healthcare. There are examples of private and public systems out there, which would be a much better model.

What about them? The Canadian healthcare system has better outcomes than the American healthcare system in several areas. Most simply, Canadians live longer.

So the government provided healthcare covers everything then? If not, you cannot legally get it by paying for it by yourself? Curious.

They have also started recommending patients just kill themselves too