Hi I live in Canada and we have one of the best health care systems in the world. Yes I can go to a hospital for free. Yes I can get treated for free but there are some serious down sides. Fist off non essential medical things are not covered. For example a guy got a pace maker implant and after a while it broke though the skin and was hanging half way out. Well he wanted this fixed but because it was classified as non essential they wanted a poor old retired man to pay $40,000 to fix it. Now there is a good side in that if something bad happens to use we will be treated.

Now the worst part is the taxation required to keep this care working. We have about 5 lotteries that helps pay for the health care but this seems to still come short. I do not how much of are actual tax is for health care but we have extremely high tax rates here and the scary part is that it keeps going up more and more every year which is getting scary. Politicians keep saying something has to be done as they recognize the taxations problems but no one want to go down in history as the guy who killed health care. Personally I want are health care to stay the same fill more of my money goes to that tax man instead of my pocket.

I am glad we have good free health care here in Canada but shatter the myth that it is free as the taxes for it are bleeding us dry.

Similar here in the UK.
We get our treatment and examinations for nothing, but that does not mean it is actually free, as you do pay the NHS through taxation.

Fortunately, I have not heard about things like you just described in the case of the old man's pacemaker.
The only thing is, if the NHS think your case is less urgent, you will have a longer wait to be treated.
The other thing, though, it is often said "If you pay peanuts you will get monkeys".
I think that certainly goes here in the UK, as the number of doctors I have met who either don't care or are totally incompetent or both, goes beyond description.

The other thing I do not agree with is the case of how selective they are sometimes when organs are needed.
I am referring here to the case of George Best, who needed a new liver (and got one) after years of alcohol abuse.
The problem I have with this is, that Best was served very quickly, as it looks to me, only on the merits of having been a top class soccer player in his day.

However, as soon as he was out of hospital, the alcohol abuse started again, and killed him in the end.

Why should he have been given this liver purely because of being George Best, especially if you see how he threw it all back in people's faces?
That is why I will never donate a single organ.
If they were to go to people who need them on an "if and when required" basis, then yes, but if they are only meant to be reserved for the one with the right name, or the ones who can afford to pay for them, then I'd rather be buried with a full body.

I have seen a lot of abuse of the system here in the USA, where people who get paid for by taxes hospital care run to the doctor for every stinking little thing that goes wrong with them. So having some limits on what can be treated makes perfect sense, however, as always with government, there is no such thing as common sense. Having one's pacemaker hanging out certainly sounds to me like something that indeed should be fixed.

You are lucky to be able to have health care though, and the ability to purchase drugs at reasonable prices. Without insureance here in the states that is not possible. Costs of health insurance are astonomical, but then again, so are hospital costs. So maybe the higher taxes aren't as bad as high taxes here AND health care insurance coverage????

I have hopes that organ donations will soon be a thing of the past. If they can clone a whole sheep, I see no reason that hearts and livers can't be grown in petre dishes. But I agree for now, the system in place as to who gets what is certainly not at all fair. He with the most money always wins, hands down, no exceptions. But that's kinda the way everything works.

Oh. I didn't know that in Canada you would have to pay tones of taxes. All I knew was that the health care is free to everyone who live in Canada.

Anyhow, I don't really know much about Canada but i'd love to live there. I don't really know why but I always wanted to go there. And to me it always seems like Canada is one of the most peaceful country in the world. Then again I might be wrong since I there so many thing hidden from us.

I really hope that Canada health care stay the same. And that the taxes things will go down. I know I'm not Canadian but I just want that to happen for some reason. =/

I don't see why we don't do this in the UK. At the moment, only a small fraction of the cost of a National Lottery ticket goes to the Government. If the Government set up a lottery solely to benefit the NHS, I'm sure that more people would buy tickets and it would provide some much needed cash for the NHS. They've done something similar for the Olympics, so why not for the NHS?

What annoys me is the treatment of people who have knowingly inflicted problems upon themselves i.e. drug and alcohol abusers and smokers. The consequences of each of those is well publicised and is now taught from a very early age. There should be no excuse for people who turn up in an A&E department because they're drunk or can't get hold of their drugs. The example of George Best is perfect. He drank an awful lot, and as a result needed a new liver. He was put to the top of the transplant waiting list, whereas logically he should have been pushed to the bottom. He didn't take care of his liver the first time round, so what says he'll take care of a second one? As we've seen, he didn't.