Do people 'deserve' universal health care?

[Lion]

Gee. The Prime Minister of Canada is coming to the states for heart surgery. Why?

It's not the Prime Minister of Canada, read the article again

From the article:

All but very rare and specialized heart surgery that is done in the United States is also available in Canada, a Toronto cardiac surgeon said.

The one significant exception would be surgery to the thoracic aorta, the giant blood vessel that carries blood that's pumped out of the heart to other organs. If a person develops a swelling or aneurysm, an abnormal bulging, in the thoracic aorta, and needs surgery to open the chest cavity, "that's a very extensive operation," Feindel said.

So what. They don't have the skills/equipment/training, etc. in Canada???

Last I heard, if the government of Ontario cannot find a treatment for you in the province, they will cover whatever expenses you would have receiving treatment elsewhere.

Check out Sick Kids hospital, they are renowned for dealing with extremely rare conditions, many of their patients are brought in from around the world, including US. Should Canada spend money on dealing with all the rarest cases in the world? I would definitely hope not. I'd love to see research done on a lot of rare disease, but one country cannot handle it by itself, in those situations, we pay to send our residents to get treatment abroad.

The Fraser Institute estimated that 41,000 Canadians sought health care services in the U.S. in 2009.

Wow. That's a lot of people to PAY for health care when they can get it for free without the added expense of traveling.

Ratio between the Canadian and American population is roughly 1 to 10. Take 41,000 Canadians, multiply it by 10. You get 410 000 people. Assume that twice the number of people would go if they had the means to, hell, make it three times. You have roughly 1.2 million people that find the current public healthcare system less then satisfactory for their needs

I still like 1.2 million more then 11-30 million people who have no way of getting expensive treatment when the time comes for it. Just sayin'





I still don't get your point here. And that's the whole problem with this whole debate (Not on this forum only, but everywhere). All the naysayers do is point out why it will fail, and provide nothing to fix this issue. Many people are suffering because of healthcare costs, a friend of a friend's family went backrupt paying his medical bills, and this isn't a rare story.

I'd like to see more points on a different system you think would be better, rather then just say it won't work. Something constructive