In Canada, you never have to wait for authorization and you are never turned down for coverage. You simply show your provincial (state) health card and you receive treatment.  Everyone is covered for non-elective surgery.  Yes, sometimes you have to wait in emergency, wait to see a specialist or even your family doctor, but no more than in the U.S.  If you are very rich, you can’t get the instant care in Canada that you can in the U.S. for any health procedure no matter how small, but most Canadians consider this an acceptable situation to ensure that everyone is covered in a public system.

Dr. Michael Rachlis, a Toronto physician and health advocate, helped clear up a few myths about the Canadian healthcare system:

• Canadians have free choice of physicians in the country. Wherever they go for treatment Canadians take their Medicare card and then the government pays the bill for whatever hospital or physician they choose.

• The Canadian government provides money to the provinces for healthcare. A province, to qualify for healthcare money, must provide universal healthcare to all its residents.

• Wait times have nothing to do with the national health insurance system, but with streamlining the process for improved health care delivery.  A new process followed for procedure such as cataract surgery and hip replacements now takes no longer than 4-6 weeks to complete.

• The decision about treatment is made just between the doctor and patient. There are no bureaucrats standing between the patient and the doctor, as in the U.S. system

• The Canadian system provides for savings. The savings are realized because: “when you don’t have to have thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers in your country to deny care, there’s huge savings on administration, both within the insurance system but also in doctors’ offices.”

• A single-payer system can negotiate much lower prices than a multiple payer system.

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