In Canada if you are physically injured or have a baby you go to the hospital, get care and go home. No worries of bankruptcy.

If you have a non urgent / long term condition you spend years waiting to see someone.

On the whole I still think it is a better system than the US but it really does have problems.

People opt not to get treated or take ambulance in the states due to the costs. Even if you have coverage from work you may only have coverage at specific hospitals for some treatments.

It varies by province and there are definite shortcomings. It is actually pretty shameful that we brag about it. As other users have noted, the wait times are ridiculous, there is also a shortage of GPs in many areas…

• my mother has not seen her GP face-to-face since December 2019; the lady up and took off to another part of Canada! No doctor came to replace her so she handles things remotely.
• my mother once also had a test and the doctors said, “this is probably cancer, you need a biopsy” the next appointment was 9 months later. She managed to get in 6 months later by calling every day. The results came back and it was indeed uterine or ovarian (can’t remember) cancer that had spread and developed into lymphoma. Nthey asked her, “ma’am, why didn’t you come sooner!?” Now, once the diagnosis was made it was a different story. She was treated and had multiple operations and chemo and radiotherapy and is now fine.
• I was misdiagnosed with a disease and found out 16 years later that I absolutely didn’t have that disease (luckily there was no treatment, just minor lifestyle changes)
• getting into a walk-in clinic can be literal hell and if you don’t have a car you are just plain screwed.

Those are just anecdotes from Nova Scotia, though.

Is it bad enough to go to the US? If you have some money and don’t want to wait, that is what lots of people do. Just get it taken care of, nip it in the bud instead of waiting and worrying.

It’s decent when it’s serious enough, but the worst case will obviously end up in the news.

There’s almost bo clinics you can visit without an appointment, so you need to call a hotline (8-1-1) to talk to someone who will ask some questions about your current medical condition and try to book you an appointment to the nearest clinic. Be ready to wait at the ER for a long time if you’re not a priority at the triage, but I’d rather wait than paying a fortune when I can’t see anyone else because all the clinics are full and you don’t have a family doctor.