Please excuse my butting in here; I'm a Brit who's been browsing through these Writer's Block answers.
I actually think that Canada's unusual position on healthcare is something that can polarise the debate in the US so much, because when Americans think "universal healthcare" they naturally tend to look north. I think I'm right in saying that, unless you count Cuba, Canada is the only country with a single-tier public system. I certainly can't think of a European country that doesn't have some form of two-tier healthcare.
But because Canada (in theory, if not in practice) restricts private provision so much, a lot of Americans take fright, assuming that under a universal-healthcare system they would be banned from taking out private insurance. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but Britain has plenty of private insurance available (though Brits actually spend less on private medicine than Canadians!) and we still manage to maintain the National Health Service.
Conversely, I wonder whether one of the main reasons the unusual single-tier public system persists in Canada might be that Canadians, when thinking about private healthcare, naturally look south. In other words, both your countries are out of the healthcare-policy mainstream, in opposite directions. Hence the polarisation I mentioned. Just a thought.
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I actually think that Canada's unusual position on healthcare is something that can polarise the debate in the US so much, because when Americans think "universal healthcare" they naturally tend to look north. I think I'm right in saying that, unless you count Cuba, Canada is the only country with a single-tier public system. I certainly can't think of a European country that doesn't have some form of two-tier healthcare.
But because Canada (in theory, if not in practice) restricts private provision so much, a lot of Americans take fright, assuming that under a universal-healthcare system they would be banned from taking out private insurance. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but Britain has plenty of private insurance available (though Brits actually spend less on private medicine than Canadians!) and we still manage to maintain the National Health Service.
Conversely, I wonder whether one of the main reasons the unusual single-tier public system persists in Canada might be that Canadians, when thinking about private healthcare, naturally look south. In other words, both your countries are out of the healthcare-policy mainstream, in opposite directions. Hence the polarisation I mentioned. Just a thought.