edited: The below information is a list of why Free Healthcare isn't ideal, from a Canadian point of view. It is in varying degrees of truth, as can be found on snopes.com (link posted by tRoCo)

50% of all provincial revenue in Canada goes to support the “free health care” in his province…his son works in that provincial government department so he should know I guess….

I see on the news up here in Canada, where Hillary Clinton introduced her new health care plan. Something similar to what we have in Canada.

I also heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada in his latest movie.

As someone who lives with the Canada health care plan I thought I would give you some facts about this great medical plan that we have in Canada.

1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month of $96 for a married couple to be covered. Sounds great eh? What they don't tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes. A large portion of that and I am not sure of the exact amount goes directly to health care, our #1 expense.

2) I would not classify what we have as health care plan; it is more like a health diagnosis system. You can get into to see a doctor quick enough so he can tell you "yes indeed you are sick or you need an operation" but now the challenge becomes getting treated or operated on. We have waiting lists out the ying yang, some as much as 2 years down the road.

3) Rather than fix what is wrong with you the usual tactic in Canada is to prescribe drugs. Have a pain, here is a drug to take-not what is causing the pain and why. No time for checking you out because it is more important to move as many patients thru as possible each hour for Government re-imbursement

4) Many Canadians do not have a family Doctor.

5) Don't require emergency treatment, as you may wait for hours in the emergency room for treatment.

6) My wife’s dad cut his hand on a power saw a few weeks back and it required that his hand be put in a splint - to our surprise we had to pay $125 for a splint because it is not covered under health care plus we have to pay $60 for each visit for him to check it out each week.

7) Shirley's cousin was diagnosed with a heart blockage. Put on a waiting list, died before he could get treatment.

8) Government allots so many operations per year. When that is done; no more operations, unless you go to your local newspaper and plead your case, and embarrass the government then money suddenly appears.

9) The Government takes great pride in telling us how much more they are increasing the funding for health care but waiting lists never get shorter. Government just keeps throwing money at the problem but it never goes away. But they are good at finding new ways to tax us. But they don't call it a tax anymore; it is now a “user fee”.

10) My mother needs an operation for a blockage in her leg but because she is a smoker they will not do it. Despite her and my father paying into the health care system all these years. My Mom is 80 years of age.

Now there is talk that maybe we should not treat fat and obese people either because they are a drain on the health care system. Let me see now, what we want in Canada is a health care system for healthy people only. That should reduce our health care costs.

11) Forget getting a second opinion, what you see is what you get.

12) I can spend what money I have left after taxes on booze, cigarettes, junk food and anything else that could kill me but I am not allowed, by law, to spend my money on getting an operation I need because that would be jumping the queue. I must wait my turn, except, if I am a hockey player or athlete then I can get looked at right away. Go figure. Where else in the world can you spend money to kill yourself, but not allowed to spend money to get healthy.

13) Oh did I mention that immigrants are covered automatically at tax payer expense having never contributed a dollar to the system and pay no premiums.

14) Oh yeah we now give free needles to drug users to try and keep them healthy. We wouldn't want a sickly druggie breaking into your house and stealing your things. But people with diabetes who pay into the health care system have to pay for their needles because it is not covered by the health care system.

I send this out. Not looking for sympathy, but as the election looms in the states, you will be hearing more and more about universal health care down there, and the advocates will be pointing to Canada.

I just want to make sure that you hear the truth about health care up here and have some food for thought, and informed questions to ask when broached with this subject.

As soon as I started reading this, I recognized it from some junk mail I had seen.

Snopes took this circulating e-mail on bit by bit and found that it's neither completely true nor completely false:

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Canadian Health Care

(it's pretty long so I figured the link would be better to post)

As Michael Moore also "raved" about health care in France in his movie, I'd like to offer up this bit of first hand information. I have a sister-in-law living in France, and her and her husband have no complaints about the health care there, and have never had to wait. Just throwing that out there.

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Yeah, I figured there was a chance this was one of "those". I looked in snopes (albeit not very long), but couldn't find it before I posted it. I fully expected someone to respond as you did.

Anyway, let's talk about "free" healthcare in our country now that we're on the subject. Do you think that we could afford it? And do you think we'd have adequate practices (state-run) to be able to handle all the new-found 'sick' people once it becomes free to get prescriptions and treatment?

I honestly don't know what the best option would be for us to be able to afford it. Do I like the idea though? Yes. Do I think it could work? Yes, because other countries can make it work relatively well. Sure there are always problems or people who complain, but I know that some people like the health care in Canada and France, so it can't be all that bad. Would I pay more tax to fund it? Yes, and I would think most people wouldn't mind paying a tax that will keep them from going into massive debt/bankruptcy in case they have a medical emergency.

The fact that the health industry is more about money than it is about helping people is what's wrong. I don't care how it's fixed. Our primary concern should be to help the people of our country be healthy.

Like the (I believe French) doctor said in SiCKO....he does well financially. He has a nice car, nice house. It's when you get greedy and want to have 10 nice cars and 3 vacation homes. Insurance companies and drug companies will do what they have to do in order to save/make money. They're a private company...that's their goal. So I think we need a system that is more concerned with the people's health than anything else.

Oh, and there's only going to be "newfound 'sick'" people because they've been refused help in the past. They've always been sick. (But yes, I realize you're probably referring to perfectly healthy people trying to get prescription drugs, although I would assume it's more difficult than simply stopping in a picking out your drug of choice.)

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