"I keep hearing how Canadians hate their healthcare system. Is this based on truth or not?"

Where are you hearing this from…?

edited to add: "carolinelalonde" struggles with severe literacy problems, I see. It should also be made clear that the (still living) guy's nine-hour wait was such an anomaly that it was on the front page of the paper here for two days.

i love my health care system…i went to the US for a trip with my girlfriends and we met a young mother who had a six week old baby at home sick and she was working and had barley any money to bring her child to the doctor. We were very thankful for our healthcare system and for the benifits we get from our govornment…maybe some canadian women think its not good enough because they havent seen what some people who are less fortunate have?

I am a Canadian and do occasionally complain about our health care system. Then I smarten up and think of the hassle and lack of care uninsured people have in the US. I will take my long wait times and inconveniences any day over having to pay crazy amounts of money out of pocket.

I thing our health care is pretty good there how ever it dose need some changes. The big problems are thing like long waite for specialists but when you take in to account that a Specialist here has 3 or 4 more times the patients than a Specialist in the US it not that bad, not enough regular family doctors, not enough nurses. I don't know anyone that hates our health care but I do know a lot of people that get frustrated with it me being one of them. A few years ago my husband had went to the ER with stomach pain like the family doctor told him to do because he thought it was hubby appendix and the ER doctor said it was something else well 3 weeks later and 4 different diagnoses they realized it was his appendix and it burst during surgery luckily he was ok

As a Canadian mom, I'd say that the health care system is great. -Don't have any money? Doesn't matter.
-Don't have health care insurance? Doesn't matter. Your child can have a doctor for free.
-If your child has a problem that doesn't seem life-threatening, but you aren't sure what it is? Take them to the doctor…no charge, no hassle with insurance companies.
-Is your child is very sick? Go to any emergency department. No one will ask you how you are going to pay. No one will tell you that you need to go to another hospital. If your child needs services that the specific hospital can not provide, they will arrange to transport your child to another institution with no charge to you.

The primary problem with the system is that, in smaller communities especially, it can be difficult to find family doctors. This can certainly limit services, and mean that you are relying more on emergency departments. Also, because general pediatricians in Canada have more training than those in the States, many pediatricians will only see referrals, and family doctors are expected to manage normal childhood illness (colds, ear infections), growth, development and vaccination. Any child with a chronic condition, however, (eg. asthma, constipation, ADHD, CF, etc) can be referred to a pediatrician.

Wait times for seeing a physician depend on the seriousness of the problem. If you have something life-threatening, you will be seen immediately. If you have something that is not serious, you may wait longer. The wait time is not based on ability to pay, but on need. The wait time is also based on where you live, unfortunately. If you live in a city, you rarely wait because that is where there is a concentration of doctors and services. This is not fair, and does need to be corrected. The rich in this country are the ones who are mainly unhappy, and this is because they feel that their money somehow entitles them to better care. There is a sense that, if you can pay for it, your child is more deserving of health care than a child from a poor family. Obviously from my answer, I disagree, and feel that children are deserving of equal health care, regardless of their background, and I am okay with my tax dollars going to equalize the quality of care across the country. Clearly, this works:

- Canada has a lower infant mortality rate than their Southern neighbors.
-Canada has a lower maternal mortality rate (7/100,000 versus 11/100,000) than the USA
- The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn mortality rate is higher than any of those countries - annual State of the World's Mothers report.

This is not to say that the system is perfect…no way. There are no perfect systems, and we should always strive to improve the quality of care given, especially to children.

Yes because it's free but the service is terrible

Here in Ottawa, a hospital emergency room and their staff was so uncaring about their waiting patients that a patient actually died in the waiting room and they didn't notice until over 24 hours later.

MONTFORT HOSPITAL IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

I can't complain much. Tho it has never taken me a year to see a specialist. Ya, the wait times can be annoying. But i have never had to wait longer than an hour.

My only problem is that OHIP doesn't cover eye check ups anymore, but cover sex change operations. errr

Oh my…I LOVE our healthcare system!! If we were to switch to a private system the country would be in uproar!
You need ANYTHING medically related - FREE, and that includes everything from a doctors visit to an emergency surgery! As of January we dont have to even pay the $45 dollars a month for our healthcare (at least here in Alberta).

You CAN pay for certain services privately if you wish to get in faster (IE. MRI or CT Scan) but usually people just wait a month or 2 and you're in!! It's wonderful!