So How do Canadians Like their System of Health Care. They Like it A Lot.

Here are two polls that should give Americans a window on how others view our health care system and how Canadians view their own. The NY Times:

Canadians both love, and love to complain, about their health care system. The Harris/Decima survey found that 70 percent of the 1,000 Canadians that it interviewed thought their health care system was working well and that 82 percent believed it was superior to the system used in the United States.

Michael Rachlis, an advocate of public health care who is a physician and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, said that the public’s enthusiasm for the system was, in itself, a problem. “Because medicare has been so popular, it’s been difficult to change it, even for the better.” Dr. Rachlis sits on one end of the health care debate in Canada: the side that contends that the system’s problems do not stem from public insurance but are related to its structure.

In another poll, via The Miami Harold:

New Ipsos/McClatchy online polls find that patients in Canada are indeed much more frustrated by waiting times to see medical specialists than patients in the United States are, however, they're much more likely to say that they have access to all the health care services they need at costs they can afford.

Looked at another way, 65 percent of Canadians said they had access to all the health care services they needed at costs they could afford; 49 percent of Americans felt the same way. Just 37 percent of Americans who make less than $50,000 a year say they have access to and can afford all the health care services they need, while 60 percent of those who make more say they can get all they need at costs they can afford.

In Canada, 61 percent of those who earn less than $55,000 said they had access to all the care they needed at costs they could afford.