Maybe I shouldn’t be participating in this debate, after all, I’m one of those socialist canadians that have been enjoying the benefits of universal health care for all since birth. Yes there are problems with wait times and yes it costs a lot of money and sometimes reading the papers you would think it’s a hopeless mess. And yet overall it costs very significantly less when measured against GDP than the American multi-payer system. Our health indicators are better. Here in Montreal we are building two new world-class state-of-the-art quaternary care hospitals and increasing the size and modernizing our main pediatric hospital. We have 24/7 access to clinics and hospitals throughout the country and even if the emergency wards are at times clogged with minor non-urgent cases, the realy important ones get treated quickly. In fact, the system has become part of our Canadian identity. If «socialism» means collecting taxes to fund public health services that benefit 100% of the population, greatly alleviating the burden for companies as compared to the US, resulting in a healthier population, then I guess I’m a socialist.
