I doubt she had substantial health insurance, being Canadian; did she just pay cash for the brain surgery?

Was it a solid gold tumor?

For the other side:
http://www.healthcoalition.ca/

maybe we wanted you to die, you fat privileged bitch.

5 stars for the pure evil of this campaign.

So the Canadian government will deny you access to treatment, eh? It's a good thing HMO's would never do something like that.

Paid for by Blue Cross of California.

you know, its nice you care about cockblocking my doc.

Dumb people don't understand why everyone is unsatisfied with America's health care system, make commercial to display this.

"Don't give up your rights to pay out the ass for health care!"

As a Canadian, I sort of like the fact that Americans don't have, and the US government (headed by Obama) isn't pushing for universal single payer health care.

The insanely bureaucratic, wasteful, expensive and inefficient American system puts US businesses at a competitive disadvantage to the rest of the western world.

:30 - The way that the right uses "Government" as a proper noun gives a lot of insight into the way they conceptualize these things. THE GOVERNMENT IS SOME BAD GUY NAMED GOVERNMENT!

So evil I don't even know where to start. That woman is a fucking traitor to humanity.

It's always the idiots that live in buttfuck nowhere towns like Waterdown, population:14 that nobody in Canada has even heard of, who think they can waltz into some city center that was designed to care for it's own poulace and demand to be put in the front of the list. Sorry, other people who are worse off might need it before you....

The whole reason she had the money to go pay for the surgery in the US is because she hasn't had to pay for anything else her entire fucking life.

Yes, my private insurance company cares about me

Washington DC with ominous Canadian flag superimposed.
"Don't let the CCCPnadian healthcare model come to America."

I think Canada's healthcare system's main problem is population density. It's a country with a lot of space and not a lot of people, so if you live in the middle of nowhere (which is most of the country) you're not going to have a lot of doctors around. The cities have plenty, though. I live in a rural area an hour outside the city. If I have a non-emergency and go to the hospital/clinic here, my wait could be anywhere between 15 minutes to a couple hours. If I go to the city, I just make an appointment, go in, get treated, leave.

The other issue is losing a lot of healthcare workers to the US, where they get paid more. This was a big issue for border towns, where Canadians could remain in Canada and work in the US. Luckily, homeland security and poorly organized immigration practices are putting an end to that, as well. Yay America!

One woman COULD HAVE DIED!!

You don't want that. Now keep on dying because you can't afford to treat minor ailments.

The evidence that universal health care doesn't work is abundant. It doesn't work in the U.K. Canada, or Massachusetts. When health care is widely subsidized by the government it increases demand beyond supply. This necessarily leads to rationing because money and doctors are finite.

The sheer malevolence expressed in some of these comments speaks volumes. Health care isn't a right it's a need. No one has a right to be provided with someone else's time and labor.

Health care does need reform. Repealing laws that require insurers to provide extremely costly benefits, as well as allowing them to sell catastrophic-only policies would reduce costs by a huge amount. In addition everyone should be allowed to purchase insurance across state lines and use Health Savings Accounts for routine expenses.

Thing is, outside the USA, a greater emphasis is put on preventative care, to keep people from getting really sick, rather than the USA's attitude of "get really sick, then we'll treat you!"
And isn't the fact that it is a need make it a right?