CANADIAN HEALTHCARE:

Last week, I went to my family physician to get a new RX for my blood pressure meds and I asked him to look at a cyst on my back shoulder. He did both and asked me to come back today to remove it which he did earlier.

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Next week, he will remove the stitches and all of us will get flu shots. Altogether, I paid $11 CAN for my RX which was subsidized by my employer RX plan. I paid exactly $0 for the visits and procedures and will pay exactly $0 next week for the final visit and flu shots.

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These were all booked the same week; the wait times were a modest half hour to fifteen minutes. The quality is very high. I do live in a very nice University area and have the office within walking distance, but it is the same fundamental care for everyone in our province.

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This story is ordinary, routine, and basic. It reflects taxes I pay happily from my salary and includes some privileges from my employer and station in life. But it is very close to equal to everyone in this society, especially when compared to the vast inequality south of us.

I have a reached a point where seeing a Gofundme for someone in the US makes me sick. I can recall when I had to wonder if I should make a copay and risk the expense to follow on 80/20 or in or out of network and so on. It is truly an abomination and now with COVID it is worse.

I never liked Obamacare which was just Romneycare and I still feel a social health system must replace privatized healthcare in the US, but there are vast degrees between these kinds of systems and they begin with a simple principle of basic equal access. It changes a society.

It also changes a family. Our healthcare financial concerns have vanished. We pay for it with a steep tax bill, but at my tax bracket, I do not pay more than I would in the US and there more family tax credits which we probably don’t need. It changes the psyche of the family.

There are elements to dispute and aspects that a fully private system can deliver unlike a public one, but they do not begin to undermine the social and familial sense of real security and ability to make a common life that having a social and public healthcare system can offer.

The key, I think, is that no one profits from your sickness and suffering. Sure, there are profits and costs, but it is not a “business” in the usual sense. Also, it does not mean there is not major research and innovation also driven by public universities like UBC where I work.

By the way, Canadians from other provinces will be quick to remind me that we have a very capitalist, private option, unequal system compared to others. This is true and I support more reform and better access, but in contradistinction to the US it is simply a real utopia.

One of the most compelling and important long term changes that must be made in American society is to severely reform its healthcare system and the only party that has fought to do that, albeit imperfectly, for the last 30 years has been the Democratic Party. Vote for Biden.

PS: that cyst was the biggest one my doctor had ever seen! Super gross! I think I pulled an American healthcare move and let it sit there too long! You can just to the doctor here, QED.