How Canadians and American differ on universal health care

​​​​​​I was 48 years old when I immigrated to Canada (from a Deep South US state) in 2005, with my wife and daughter (who was 14 at the time). Under the auspices of the NAFTA treaty (as skilled work immigrants) we became eligible for Medicare after a three month wait. And we have no complaints about Canada's system of universal health care.

When we came to Canada, Canada had a new conservative government and "privatisation" of the health care system was a hot topic. The Obamacare" debate in the States educated a lot of Canadians about our own health care system. And there are few Canadians now who support a privatized health care system like the one “enjoyed” by Americans.

I remember a conversation I had with a young consultant in my office about how Americans and Canadians are different.  We agreed that Canadians are in most respects (he said 75%, I said 90%) just like Americans ... but where they differ, the differences are profound.
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"It's not conspicuous," Jason said, "it's inside ... it's in our psyches."
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"How do you mean?" I asked.

Jason said, "Americans are all about themselves, what they can get for themselves, it's always me, me, me ... Canadians are more community minded."

I had to agree with that.  I think that's why Canadians are far more willing to embrace a system like our single-payer health care system; not because it works so well for us, individually, but because it works so well for all Canadians, many of whom, particularly those living in some of the world's most remote regions, would have no decent medical care without it.  

A big difference in Canadian and American attitudes toward universal health care coverage is that Canadians do not fret excessively about people taking advantage of social services.  Undocumented immigrants, ​​or Reagan's "welfare queens", or whoever; that "straw man" is a very American creation.  It is simply accepted by Canadians that there will be abusers; that is no reason to eliminate a system that is beneficial to everyone else.  In other words, Canadians are reluctant to "throw out the baby with the bathwater."

I dealt with my own cognitive dissonance, when I crossed the US-Canadian border, by thinking this way:  So what if someone else's kid gets free hospital treatment for a head injury?  That doesn't take anything from me.  Because one day it might be my kid's turn to ride in that ambulance.  That's the way a healthy society works.  And that's how we fight back against the insatiable greed of the one-percenters. We are our neighbor's keeper.  We're all in this together.

Canadians don't worry excessively/compulsively about "those people" who are getting something for nothing. 

It's interesting that I had to immigrate to another country to learn what community is really all about.