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Comment by merinowool | Hacker News Reader

Is Canadian healthcare any good? Where I live, you pay for this privilege quite a lot of tax at still you have to go privately, because the quality is just not worth your health. I really wish "universal healthcare" was scrapped, so I could afford better services privately.

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Canadian living in the US: in my experience Canadian health care is as good or better than in the US. Waiting times are probably somewhat longer for non-emergencies because of triaging, but (again, my experience, subjective, etc) I've often felt doctors are more interested in providing care and less interested in unnecessary upselling.

I've only ever lived in the GTA, though. It's my understanding that in many places away from major cities there can be a shortage of doctors.

Canadian living in the US: in my experience Canadian health care is as good or better than in the US.

Canadian living in US as well. The one thing I've noticed is the choice of healthcare in the US (for those with good insurance). Have cancer? Pick the best hospital you can find in the area. In Canada, you might live next to a world-class institute or it might just be a regular hospital. That's where you go.

But yes, healthcare in Canada is very good. The other thing I would call out is that experimental/cutting edge technology is often available in the US before Canada.

Yup, Canadian healthcare is generally excellent. The main complaints thar hit the news are generally long wait times for elective surgeries like knee fixes.

For anything other than that I've had effectively zero wait time and excellent care. There are even free health lines you can call for basic info.

Canadian services are typically good especially for urgent care things, I only have gone private on one occasion and that was for an MRI years ago when there were fewer of them available. I had a tear in my MCL and they wanted to see the degree (relatively low priority, it wasn't a full tear and I didnt need surgery). The wait for the MRI was ~6 weeks but so just paid out of pocket privately and had the results sent to my doctor. Took 2 days and he got what he needed.

Canada has good Healthcare up to the level of US medtech about 20 years ago. Anything invented in the last 20 years is not available through Canada Health Care. They will have an occasional crock of s* like one or two radiation machines for cancer for an entire province of 5 million people.

I think the thing that improves country wide healthcare outcomes in Canada is that everyone can go to a doctor. However, outcomes for complex cases are not as good.

It's great, but there can be long wait lists for specialists, even for urgent things.

Here the problem is that specialists aren't that great, and combined with long wait time that leads you nowhere you potentially put your life at risk. Complaint procedures are as bureaucratic as possible so you get no redress.

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