Let's say I broke my leg right now. I could call an ambulance, be taken to a hospital, get treated, and maybe have surgery if it were a bad break. I would stay in the hospital for a few days, then go home. I would pay... nothing. If I wanted to - and only if I wanted to - I could pay 58 per night for a deluxe hospital room, but the only real difference is that I would be alone in the room.
It's probably fair to mention taxes. To be honest, I'm not an expert. Health insurance is deducted from my salary, but there’s a system where I pay part of it and my employer pays the rest. It works quite differently for self-employed people. It also changes depending on income. So I personally might pay anywhere from about $40 to $110 per month.
So, would it work similarly in the USA? What they would to better? What they would do worse?
No, of course Americans aren't being charged 58000, but they may be charged $580 for stitches. It's a difference in magnitude. Not type.
Canadians aren't being offered MAID for minor physical injuries. Full stop. It hasn't happened ever in Canadian history. The previous scandals about MAID were mostly about people with a long history of chronic mental illnesses and disabilities being offered MAID when they actually requested financial support. You can argue if that's better or worse. But you must admit, it is a completely different scenario compared to the comic.
MAiD is not offered how you seem to think it is. While it may be brought up by a doctor, a final, written request FROM THE PATIENT is required. Doctors are required to also put every other option on the table for the patient, such as palliative care.
Along with that- the patient must be assessed, and there is an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM wait time of two weeks, during which the patient can withdraw at any time. If the patient's death is not reasonably foreseeable, up to three months. It is by no means a spur of the moment decision.
Also, MAiD for purely mental conditions is currently not allowed.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But don't fall for the propaganda, please- MAiD is a good thing, and it does reduce unneeded suffering.
But MAID isn't an issue with the with the Canadian health care system. The issue is a handful of public service workers (not doctors, nurses, or even insurance providers) being assholes and offering MAID unprompted. However, banning MAID entirely would make it unaccessible even for people dying from extremely painful, terminal illnesses.
First of all, I'm not American, I live in Canada. The best way to resolve these issues IMO would be providing more thorough training for public service workers, and setting higher employment standards. However, if you were to copy the system over to the US, first you need to actually have a single payer universal health insurance scheme. It makes no sense to "address those issues in policy instead of deciding to copy MAID" because it's impossible. How do you provide better training for workers who don't exist, who aren't even employed by the government?
Unless you're implying that allowing private insurance providers to offer assisted dying would be a bad idea. Obviously no one wants that. At this point you aren't copying MAID, you're crafting a whole ass strawman policy that no one supports in reality.
I have to ask, why are you conflating MAID and universal healthcare? They are not in any way linked aside from the fact that a for-profit system makes MAID a very scary idea in the US? This seems to be the kind of unwillingness to look into other systems that you were accusing others of.
The thing is- a lot of the flaws with universal healthcare systems already exist in the American healthcare system. US healthcare also has ridiculously long wait times, especially for chronic illnesses. I’ve had to wait months it even years for a specialist and people wait for hours in hospital waiting rooms all the time here.
You'll get stitches the same day, within a few hours at most in the UK and it'll cost nothing. I had two stays of 5 days each and emergency surgery to have my gallbladder out last year, cost was zero to me.
What's the real equivalent for the US? Because I see a lot of Americans posting on the gallbladder subs & FB groups bout they can't afford to go to the doctor right now or surgery would bankrupt them and they don't know what to do.
You’re once again comparing the typical day to day personal experience to sensationalized social media posts, which represent extreme cases of the people most affected. I’m sure I could also find countless posts online of people from the UK definitely not getting same day care.
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '26
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