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Hahahaha.You’ve been fed a line of bullshit.First, there is no “inconvenience”. I can go to literally any clinic, doctor, or hospital in the country and all I need to do is to show them my health card:Second, about those taxes: healthcare expenditures are mostly covered by various forms of income taxes, which means that you pay based on what you earn. If you’re a struggling new grad, you pay very little. If you are a rich old fart, you pay more. In both cases, overwhelmingly, people think that it is “worth it”. (And by the way? Just as an aside? In Canada, our taxes are actually lower than your taxes + health insurance + copays.)Here’s a great short video (by an American doctor) which explains the Canadian healthcare system really well:This article is well worth reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/06/health-insurance-canada-lie/?arc404=trueHere’s the text:In my prior life as an insurance executive, it was my job to deceive Americans about their health care. I misled people to protect profits. In fact, one of my major objectives, as a corporate propagandist, was to do my part to “enhance shareholder value.” That work contributed directly to a climate in which fewer people are insured, which has shaped our nation’s struggle against the coronavirus, a condition that we can fight only if everyone is willing and able to get medical treatment. Had spokesmen like me not been paid to obscure important truths about the differences between the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems, tens of thousands of Americans who have died during the pandemic might still be alive.In 2007, I was working as vice president of corporate communications for Cigna. That summer, Michael Moore was preparing to release his latest documentary, “Sicko,” contrasting American health care with that in other rich countries. (Naturally, we looked terrible.) I spent months meeting secretly with my counterparts at other big insurers to plot our assault on the film, which contained many anecdotes about patients who had been denied coverage for important treatments. One example was 3-year-old Annette Noe. When her parents asked Cigna to pay for two cochlear implants that would allow her to hear, we agreed to cover only one.Clearly my colleagues and I would need a robust defense. On a task force for the industry’s biggest trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), we talked about how we might make health-care systems in Canada, France, Britain and even Cuba look just as bad as ours. We enlisted APCO Worldwide, a giant PR firm. Agents there worked with AHIP to put together a binder of laminated talking points for company flacks like me to use in news releases and statements to reporters.Here’s an example from one AHIP brief in the binder: “A May 2004 poll found that 87% of Canada’s business leaders would support seeking health care outside the government system if they had a pressing medical concern.” The source was a 2004 book by Sally Pipes, president of the industry-supported Pacific Research Institute, titled “Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer.” Another bullet point, from the same book, quoted the CEO of the Canadian Association of Radiologists as saying that “the radiology equipment in Canada is so bad that ‘without immediate action radiologists will no longer be able to guarantee the reliability and quality of examinations.’ ”Much of this runs against the experience of many Americans, especially the millions who take advantage of low pharmaceutical prices in Canada to meet their prescription needs. But there were more specific reasons to be skeptical of those claims. We didn’t know, for example, who conducted that 2004 survey or anything about the sample size or methodology — or even what criteria were used to determine who qualified as a “business leader.” We didn’t know if the assertion about imaging equipment was based on reliable data or was an opinion. You could easily turn up comparable complaints about outdated equipment at U.S. hospitals.(Contacted by The Washington Post, an AHIP spokesman said this perspective was “from the pre-ACA past. We are future focused by building on what works and fixing what doesn’t.” He added that the organization “believes everyone deserves affordable, high-quality coverage and care — regardless of health status, income, or pre-existing conditions.” An APCO Worldwide spokesperson told The Post that the company “has been involved in supporting our clients with the evolution of the health care system. We are proud of our work.” Cigna did not respond to requests for comment.)Nevertheless, I spent much of that year as an industry spokesman, my last after 20 years in the business, spreading AHIP’s “information” to journalists and lawmakers to create the impression that our health-care system was far superior to Canada’s, which we wanted people to believe was on the verge of collapse. The campaign worked. Stories began to appear in the press that cast the Canadian system in a negative light. And when Democrats began writing what would become the Affordable Care Act in early 2009, they gave no serious consideration to a publicly financed system like Canada’s. We succeeded so wildly at defining that idea as radical that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), then chair of the Senate Finance Committee, had single-payer supporters ejected from a hearing.Today, the respective responses of Canada and the United States to the coronavirus pandemic prove just how false the ideas I helped spread were. There are more than three times as many coronavirus infections per capita in the United States, and the mortality rate is twice the rate in Canada. And although we now test more people per capita, our northern neighbor had much earlier successes with testing, which helped make a difference throughout the pandemic.The most effective myth we perpetuated — the industry trots it out whenever major reform is proposed — is that Canadians and people in other single-payer countries have to endure long waits for needed care. Just last year, in a statement submitted to a congressional committee for a hearing on the Medicare for All Act of 2019, AHIP maintained that “patients would pay more to wait longer for worse care” under a single-payer system.While it’s true that Canadians sometimes have to wait weeks or months for elective procedures (knee replacements are often cited), the truth is that they do not have to wait at all for the vast majority of medical services. And, contrary to another myth I used to peddle — that Canadian doctors are flocking to the United States — there are more doctors per 1,000 people in Canada than here. Canadians see their doctors an average of 6.8 times a year, compared with just four times a year in this country.Most important, no one in Canada is turned away from doctors because of a lack of funds, and Canadians can get tested and treated for the coronavirus without fear of receiving a budget-busting medical bill. That undoubtedly is one of the reasons Canada’s covid-19 death rate is so much lower than ours. In America, exorbitant bills are a defining feature of our health-care system. Despite the assurances from President Trump and members of Congress that covid-19 patients will not be charged for testing or treatment, they are on the hook for big bills, according to numerous reports.That is not the case in Canada, where there are no co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance for covered benefits. Care is free at the point of service. And those laid off in Canada don’t face the worry of losing their health insurance. In the United States, by contrast, more than 40 million have lost their jobs during this pandemic, and millions of them — along with their families — also lost their coverage.Then there’s quality of care. By numerous measures, it is better in Canada. Some examples: Canada has far lower rates than the United States of hospitalizations from preventable causes like diabetes (almost twice as common here) and hypertension (more than eight times as common). And even though Canada spends less than half what we do per capita on health care, life expectancy there is 82 years, compared with 78.6 years in the United States.When the pandemic reached North America, Canadian hospitals, which operate under annual global budgets — fixed payments typically allocated at the provincial and regional levels to cover operating expenses — were better prepared for the influx of patients than many U.S. hospitals. And Canada ramped up production of personal protective equipment much more quickly than we did.Of the many regrets I have about what I once did for a living, one of the biggest is slandering Canada’s health-care system. If the United States had undertaken a different kind of reform in 2009 (or anytime since), one that didn’t rely on private insurance companies that have every incentive to limit what they pay for, we’d be a healthier country today. Living without insurance dramatically increases your chances of dying unnecessarily. Over the past 13 years, tens of thousands of Americans have probably died prematurely because, unlike our neighbors to the north, they either had no coverage or were so inadequately insured that they couldn’t afford the care they needed. I live with that horror, and my role in it, every day.

Have you considered that you may have been lied to?See https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/06/health-insurance-canada-lie/?arc404=trueHere’s the full text if it’s behind a paywall for you:The health care scareI sold Americans a lie about Canadian medicine. Now we’re paying the price.By Wendell PotterAUGUST 6, 2020In my prior life as an insurance executive, it was my job to deceive Americans about their health care. I misled people to protect profits. In fact, one of my major objectives, as a corporate propagandist, was to do my part to “enhance shareholder value.” That work contributed directly to a climate in which fewer people are insured, which has shaped our nation’s struggle against the coronavirus, a condition that we can fight only if everyone is willing and able to get medical treatment. Had spokesmen like me not been paid to obscure important truths about the differences between the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems, tens of thousands of Americans who have died during the pandemic might still be alive.In 2007, I was working as vice president of corporate communications for Cigna. That summer, Michael Moore was preparing to release his latest documentary, “Sicko,” contrasting American health care with that in other rich countries. (Naturally, we looked terrible.) I spent months meeting secretly with my counterparts at other big insurers to plot our assault on the film, which contained many anecdotes about patients who had been denied coverage for important treatments. One example was 3-year-old Annette Noe. When her parents asked Cigna to pay for two cochlear implants that would allow her to hear, we agreed to cover only one.Clearly my colleagues and I would need a robust defense. On a task force for the industry’s biggest trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), we talked about how we might make health-care systems in Canada, France, Britain and even Cuba look just as bad as ours. We enlisted APCO Worldwide, a giant PR firm. Agents there worked with AHIP to put together a binder of laminated talking points for company flacks like me to use in news releases and statements to reporters.Here’s an example from one AHIP brief in the binder: “A May 2004 poll found that 87% of Canada’s business leaders would support seeking health care outside the government system if they had a pressing medical concern.” The source was a 2004 book by Sally Pipes, president of the industry-supported Pacific Research Institute, titled “Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer.” Another bullet point, from the same book, quoted the CEO of the Canadian Association of Radiologists as saying that “the radiology equipment in Canada is so bad that ‘without immediate action radiologists will no longer be able to guarantee the reliability and quality of examinations.’ ”Much of this runs against the experience of many Americans, especially the millions who take advantage of low pharmaceutical prices in Canada to meet their prescription needs. But there were more specific reasons to be skeptical of those claims. We didn’t know, for example, who conducted that 2004 survey or anything about the sample size or methodology — or even what criteria were used to determine who qualified as a “business leader.” We didn’t know if the assertion about imaging equipment was based on reliable data or was an opinion. You could easily turn up comparable complaints about outdated equipment at U.S. hospitals.(Contacted by The Washington Post, an AHIP spokesman said this perspective was “from the pre-ACA past. We are future focused by building on what works and fixing what doesn’t.” He added that the organization “believes everyone deserves affordable, high-quality coverage and care — regardless of health status, income, or pre-existing conditions.” An APCO Worldwide spokesperson told The Post that the company “has been involved in supporting our clients with the evolution of the health care system. We are proud of our work.” Cigna did not respond to requests for comment.)Nevertheless, I spent much of that year as an industry spokesman, my last after 20 years in the business, spreading AHIP’s “information” to journalists and lawmakers to create the impression that our health-care system was far superior to Canada’s, which we wanted people to believe was on the verge of collapse. The campaign worked. Stories began to appear in the press that cast the Canadian system in a negative light. And when Democrats began writing what would become the Affordable Care Act in early 2009, they gave no serious consideration to a publicly financed system like Canada’s. We succeeded so wildly at defining that idea as radical that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), then chair of the Senate Finance Committee, had single-payer supporters ejected from a hearing.Today, the respective responses of Canada and the United States to the coronavirus pandemic prove just how false the ideas I helped spread were. There are more than three times as many coronavirus infections per capita in the United States, and the mortality rate is twice the rate in Canada. And although we now test more people per capita, our northern neighbor had much earlier successes with testing, which helped make a difference throughout the pandemic.The most effective myth we perpetuated — the industry trots it out whenever major reform is proposed — is that Canadians and people in other single-payer countries have to endure long waits for needed care. Just last year, in a statement submitted to a congressional committee for a hearing on the Medicare for All Act of 2019, AHIP maintained that “patients would pay more to wait longer for worse care” under a single-payer system.While it’s true that Canadians sometimes have to wait weeks or months for elective procedures (knee replacements are often cited), the truth is that they do not have to wait at all for the vast majority of medical services. And, contrary to another myth I used to peddle — that Canadian doctors are flocking to the United States — there are more doctors per 1,000 people in Canada than here. Canadians see their doctors an average of 6.8 times a year, compared with just four times a year in this country.Most important, no one in Canada is turned away from doctors because of a lack of funds, and Canadians can get tested and treated for the coronavirus without fear of receiving a budget-busting medical bill. That undoubtedly is one of the reasons Canada’s covid-19 death rate is so much lower than ours. In America, exorbitant bills are a defining feature of our health-care system. Despite the assurances from President Trump and members of Congress that covid-19 patients will not be charged for testing or treatment, they are on the hook for big bills, according to numerous reports.That is not the case in Canada, where there are no co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance for covered benefits. Care is free at the point of service. And those laid off in Canada don’t face the worry of losing their health insurance. In the United States, by contrast, more than 40 million have lost their jobs during this pandemic, and millions of them — along with their families — also lost their coverage.Then there’s quality of care. By numerous measures, it is better in Canada. Some examples: Canada has far lower rates than the United States of hospitalizations from preventable causes like diabetes (almost twice as common here) and hypertension (more than eight times as common). And even though Canada spends less than half what we do per capita on health care, life expectancy there is 82 years, compared with 78.6 years in the United States.When the pandemic reached North America, Canadian hospitals, which operate under annual global budgets — fixed payments typically allocated at the provincial and regional levels to cover operating expenses — were better prepared for the influx of patients than many U.S. hospitals. And Canada ramped up production of personal protective equipment much more quickly than we did.Of the many regrets I have about what I once did for a living, one of the biggest is slandering Canada’s health-care system. If the United States had undertaken a different kind of reform in 2009 (or anytime since), one that didn’t rely on private insurance companies that have every incentive to limit what they pay for, we’d be a healthier country today. Living without insurance dramatically increases your chances of dying unnecessarily. Over the past 13 years, tens of thousands of Americans have probably died prematurely because, unlike our neighbors to the north, they either had no coverage or were so inadequately insured that they couldn’t afford the care they needed. I live with that horror, and my role in it, every day.

Q: Why can't we have a national healthcare system based on Medicare?We absolutely could!Sadly, were it not for the boneheads in congress who think that their job is to represent mainly the wealthiest 1% of the people (who are also the biggest campaign contributors) and the health insurance industry, we would probably already have Medicare for all.Wealthy people don’t need health insurance because they have the funds to pay any costs out of pocket, so, naturally, they don’t support any national health insurance plans.Also, the big health insurance carriers (Anthem, Aetna, Kaiser, Humana, Cigna, United Health, and Highmark) would all stand to lose billions in profits—as would the pharmaceutical companies.Many of the medical problems (that are also usually more expensive to treat) are random and unpredictable. A wealthy person would have the funds to pay for treatment, but 99% of people simply wouldn’t.The forces against any national health insurance plan are formidable, and they are fully prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing and advertising that is intended to persuade people into voting against their own best interests.Here is the truth.98% of us need to have health insurance.Although we could diligently set aside money for medical care during all of our working lives, we still wouldn’t have anywhere near the hundreds of thousands (in some rare cases, millions) of dollars that it can require to treat any of a host of known medical problems — many of which require very expensive medications for years.Some examples:A bone marrow transplant (commonly used to treat leukemia) costs between $300,000 and $800,00.Coronary bypass surgery costs $75,000 — not including hospitalization, medications, and follow-up care.Aids medications cost about $18,000 per year.Insulin costs about $12,000 per year.If you’re lucky and you can work, you might be able to get a group health insurance policy, but the sad fact is that no private insurance carrier is going to issue an individual health insurance policy to anyone with heart disease, diabetes, aids, cancer, high blood pressure, or any other “high-risk” health issue.It’s no surprise that the single biggest cause of bankruptcy is medical costs.(From: Top 5 Reasons Why People Go Bankrupt)“A study done at Harvard University indicates that this is the biggest cause of bankruptcy, representing 62% of all personal bankruptcies. One of the interesting caveats of this study shows that 78% of filers had some form of health insurance, thus bucking the myth that medical bills affect only the uninsured.”As it happens, we have a solution for this problem. It’s called insurance.Insurance is simply a way of spreading out a financial risk over a large enough number of people to minimise the impact for any individual.Most people don’t understand how insurance works. Everybody wants to have their medical costs paid for when they are incurred, but they really don’t want to pay for the insurance until after they need it. This isn’t how it works, however. The way it’s supposed to work is that everybody pays a little into the insurance fund over time, so that the funds will be available when needed.Insurance companies can use historical data to accurately predict the amount of money needed to pay for medical costs for a large population. They also can, and do, relate these costs to different “risk classes” such as age, sex, location, occupation, and known medical history. Most people don’t know that every time they file a health insurance claim, there is a database record created that all of the insurance companies share and have access to.One problem with this is that the insurance companies (for-profit companies) can use this data to select which risks they want to accept and which they don’t. A lot of people who apply for health insurance are, therefore, simply rejected.Another issue is that insurance companies can make health insurance premiums really expensive for those in higher risk segments.There are several serious underlying problems with the healthcare system in the USA. Most of these are related to the for-profit delivery of health care services, equipment, facilities resources, pharmaceuticals and research.Not everyone is required to be part of the insurance risk pool. A lot of younger or healthier people don’t see the need for health insurance. They rarely go to the doctor and don’t need any prescription drugs, so it seems like a huge waste of money to buy insurance. What they don’t understand is that by paying for it when they don’t need it, insurance premiums become lower and average out overall. And, as I said, there is no way to know if you will be affected by some disease or injury that is extremely expensive to treat. (This can happen to people who are young or otherwise healthy.)Private insurance companies are not required to accept a risk. Once the insurance company finds out that an individual has any of a number of known health issues (like high blood pressure, cancer, cardio-vascular problems, or any chronic problem) they simply refuse to accept the risk. Most people have group health insurance though their employers, but those who are not members of a group policy may find that they simply can’t get health insurance.Insurance carriers limit their liability. Private carriers set maximum annual and lifetime limits on benefits. If actual medical expenses exceed the limit, then the individual is responsible for costs.Medical service providers and pharmaceutical companies can charge whatever they want to. Price-gouging and profiteering are common.Medical service providers can refuse to join insurance company networks (where costs are pre-determined) This is one outcome of the ongoing struggle between medical service providers and insurance companies.The way to fix this whole problem is with a hybrid system that combines the financial power of the government with the administrative efficiency of private insurance carriers.Although the Affordable Care Act (aka: “Obamacare) was able to solve the problems associated with pre-existing conditions, the concept of multi-carrier, state-level, insurance risk “pools” at the heart of of the ACA was poorly thought out, inefficient, and destined to fail. It was done as a compromise to keep private insurance carriers in control.As it turns out, however, private insurance carriers are reluctant to participate (because too few are participating) and too many people who have expensive medical conditions are in the risk pool.This can’t be fixed. It’s a fatal flaw.What we need is for the government to assume the major part of the financial burden associated with health insurance and then allow the private market to participate as value-added service providers.Essentially, the solution is to use Medicare as the financial “foundation” for universal health insurance and then allow private insurance carriers to provide supplemental or “wrap-around” insurance for those who desire (and can afford) better coverage. The “wrap around” coverage (also called “Medicare Advantage”) carriers would actually handle filing the the Medicare claim on behalf of the service provider.Employers could offer the supplemental insurance coverage as a benefit for employees for much less than they are paying to subsidize group policies.I have Medicare “Advantage” insurance and my premiums are $119/month (plus the $134/month for Medicare part B premiums). This insurance covers everything with very low deductibles and copays and even includes excellent drug and dental benefits as well. This is “PPO” coverage, so I can go to any doctor I want to. The network of service providers is very extensive. I can also still go to out-of-network doctors but the co-pays are higher.Medicare-for-all would have the financial power that can come only from universal participation. It would provide the government financial backing that is absolutely necessary to cover larger major medical expenses. Government participation would also provide the “clout” to push back on unreasonably escalating medical and drug costs.As a former insurance agent, I can wholeheartedly say that Medicare for all is definitely the way to go.