The Philosophy Discussion Forum

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2026 12:16 am IC, the point is you were not curious.

No, the point is, I already knew it was the truth.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2026 2:24 pm

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2026 12:16 am IC, the point is you were not curious.

No, the point is, I already knew it was the truth.

??????

You "knew it was the truth"? In spite of looking at the numbers? In spite, perhaps of numerous times crossing the border, noting no apparent significant difference in prosperity. Driven around in both countries, ditto? You still believe it to be the truth, even after having been shown the numbers?

And when you say "leftist governments in Ontario" you SEEM to be referring to the Liberals, not the brief period in the early 90's when the NDP formed the government.

<< and BTW, I would be just as distrustful of something coming from a left wing source >>

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2026 3:32 pm ??????

You "knew it was the truth"?

There's a thing called, "experience" and "being there" that imparts information that statistics may only confirm.

IC. Would the Canadian healthcare system offer better healthcare if it were run on a for-profit basis without government subsidization? If Canada adopted the American healthcare strategy, would you be able to afford to personally pay for health insurance premiums from insurance companies running on a for-profit basis and receive better care than you do now?

UH .... not all insurance in the US, life, marine (property), or health care is by "for profit" entities.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 06, 2026 11:35 pm IC. Would the Canadian healthcare system offer better healthcare if it were run on a for-profit basis without government subsidization?

It's very hard to say, Gary.

I've said this before, so I'll repeat it here: there seems to be no easy solution to the problem of public healthcare. It's very expensive to invent and implement new medical research and learning and new medical technologies. It's very expensive to supply them to everybody. It's so expensive that it takes more funds than anything else government ever tries to supply to citizens. Eventually, it bankrupts itself, and it can bankrupt a whole system.

At the same time, health care is very important. People need access to it, and not with punitive levels of cost.

How does one fix that? I don't know. I don't think that, at present, anybody actually has a solution to that problem. If they did, some country would be doing it right. But the American system seems to me to be too hard on the citizen. The Canadian system seems fiscally unsustainable, old-school and collapsing. The American system produces medical innovation, deluxe care, and new research, but is hideously expensive; the Canadian system produces debt, obsolete services, massive waiting lists, and even people dying in emergency rooms. (The Canadian system is also now murdering its own patients, but nobody talks about that much.)

What's to be done? I don't know. But I do know that simplistic, one-dimensional approaches, like either all-pay or no-pay, aren't workable either. So perhaps some hybrid is the right way to go.

Certainly, it's one single most difficult problem any modern government has to tangle with.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 1:56 am ...... The American system produces medical innovation, deluxe care, and new research, but is hideously expensive; the Canadian system produces debt, obsolete services, massive waiting lists, and even people dying in emergency rooms. ..........

It might come as a shock, but the US does not lead the world in medical innovation, medical care standard etc. Not even in the top ten. And yes, Canada ranked higher than the US.

DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS. Look it up for yourself. There is more than one list (different criteria) but on almost all of them the US is well off from the top.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 4:46 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 1:56 am ...... The American system produces medical innovation, deluxe care, and new research, but is hideously expensive; the Canadian system produces debt, obsolete services, massive waiting lists, and even people dying in emergency rooms. ..........

It might come as a shock, but the US does not lead the world in medical innovation, medical care standard etc. Not even in the top ten. And yes, Canada ranked higher than the US.

Decidedly not the case, when it comes to medical innovation. In Canada, many of the cutting-edge procedures are simply not available at all. And even when one is, the waiting lines for them are often years long. Heck, even getting a GP is impossible for some people. As the Canadian Medical Association points out, "More than one in five Canadians – an estimated 6.5 million people – don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner they see regularly. It’s a problem that’s getting worse." (https://www.cma.ca/healthcare-for-real/ ... ily-doctor)

It's actually pretty funny to hear somebody who's never been engaged at all with the Canadian medical system lecture with his eyes closed about what it's like. Try living with it. Try actually going there and getting a procedure yourself. You'll find out. Wherever you're getting your information, they're lying to you. Canada's medical system is "rank," alright; but not in the way you think.

Like before IC, look at the data/rank listing reports. for yourself.

When you say "one in 5 Canadians doesn't have a GP" is that good or bad compared to the US (what fraction HERE do not have a GP?). How about compared to Australia? How about compared to Belgium? Etc.

Since we know you think you don't have to look up, for the US it is about 1/3 that do not have a GP. That's WORSE THAN CANADA.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 4:17 pm When you say "one in 5 Canadians doesn't have a GP"...

Didn't you notice? "I" didn't say it: the very governmental organization responsible for all of the administration of health in Canada declares it.

Didn't you bother to look up the source?

Meanwhile, do you know what Canadians do when they can't get a new or better medical procedure in Canada? One of two things: suffer, or go to the US and buy it. Those are the options.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 4:31 pm
Didn't you notice? "I" didn't say it: the very governmental organization responsible for all of the administration of health in Canada declares it.
Didn't you bother to look up the source?

This ISN'T about sources. You said that 1/5th of Canadians did not have access to a primary care physician (we will assume this is true) and concluded this was worse than the US.

WHY that conclusion when in the US it is 1/3rd that do not have a primary care physician?

Isn't 1/5th without BETTER than 1/3rd without? Did you simply jump from "1/5th without, bad, must be worse than in the US" without bothering to see what fraction were without in the US?

And going elsewhere for a medical procedure does not necessarily mean health care worse where you are. I'm old enough to remember "thalidomide" and the days before Roe v Wade when women who had been taking thalidomide but became pregnant (and who could afford this) flew to Sweden for a medical procedure they could not get here. That wasn't because Swedish medicine better. Just like now with Roe v Wade gone the reason women in Texas might travel to Massachusetts to get a medical procedure isn't because Texas medical facilities are inferior to those here in Massachusetts.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 6:04 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2026 4:31 pm
Didn't you notice? "I" didn't say it: the very governmental organization responsible for all of the administration of health in Canada declares it.
Didn't you bother to look up the source?

This ISN'T about sources. You said...

No, the Canadian Medical Association said...go on...

that 1/5th of Canadians did not have access to a primary care physician (we will assume this is true) and concluded this was worse than the US.

Show me where I said that. You'll find I didn't.

There are lots of reasons why people go without a GP. One is cost, as in the US. Another is the lack of them, as in Canada.

But when you look back, you'll see we were talking about medical procedures, training, and technology; all of which are far higher in the US. So is availability, albeit not cheaply. In the US, you can buy what you need; you cannot, in Canada. Sure, the government will cover most procedures...eventually...if you can get a recommendation...and if there's equipment...and if there is technology to do the procedure...and if not? You go to the US, and pay. Or you suffer.

You are being ridiculous.

A rather large number of sites rank countries by health care. They do not all use the same standard measures, so the rankings vary somewhat. A SAMPLING of sites: World Population Review, numbeo, International Insurance, World Country Data, Visual Capitalist, US News,......

But IC, feel free to look on your own, searching for ANY that place the US near the top, that place the US above Canada. When you have found some sites listing the US above Canada in health care rating, please share those sites with us. Unless you meant a ranking by cost of health care (the US leads in that category).

I love my country, but it doesn't have a good health care system, and being a rich country, no excuse for that.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2026 4:32 am You are being ridiculous.

No, I'm being truthful. And if you lived there, you'd know. But you don't, so perhaps you imagine Canada to be some sort of medical Disneyland it has never been, and certainly isn't now. Government "health care" turns out to be very problematic; perhaps not quite as problematic as pay healthcare, but seriously problematic, nonetheless.

As I said, there's no easy solution to this one. And there appears to be no place on earth that has "got it right" yet. So some hybrid solution may hold promise, but nobody really yet knows how to solve the public health care riddle.

I love my country, but it doesn't have a good health care system, and being a rich country, no excuse for that.

I know your country well. I'd consider living in it myself, were it not for the price of health care. So I agree with you about that. But you also don't want Canada's system -- you can trust me on that. Neither is really a good situation to be in.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2026 3:14 pm

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2026 4:32 am You are being ridiculous.

No, I'm being truthful. And if you lived there, you'd know. But you don't, so perhaps you imagine Canada to be some sort of medical Disneyland it has never been, and certainly isn't now. Government "health care" turns out to be very problematic; perhaps not quite as problematic as pay healthcare, but seriously problematic, nonetheless.

Ah, you admit it. You don't even necessarily believe that Canada's health care worse than US health care.

BUT --- that was not why I said "ridiculous". That's because you presented NO DATA, referred to no public listing of countries by quality of health care. The statement "Canadian health care worse than US health care" is NOT supported by listing ways in which the Canadian system is deficient. Better/worse are COMPARATIVE terms.

PS -- you didn't even take the bait of my example for "go elsewhere because medical treatment not available where you were". If places A and B were identical in all health regards with one exception, one procedure available in B but not A, are you sure you want to say health care in B is better than health care in A? Didn't you get what medical procedure was being referred to?