jpb;
Happy New Year to you sir, I trust that the year's been a good one for you thus far.
We've had a relatively mild winter so far here - have only had to plow the driveway twice - but it appears that the third time is in the offing as the white stuff is drifting down as I type.
As some of the posters have mentioned already, I would also opine that the medical system is hit and miss.
Here in the Okanagan, while we're comparatively rural, it's still a popular place to be, so we'll get doctors in from South Africa or parts of the world where they'd prefer less winter and more recreational activity than they'd find in rural Alberta or Saskatchewan for instance.
That said, even here we're having problems recruiting new doctors and a few valleys over in the Kootenays some towns are forced to shut down their ER because of a lack of doctors.
Some folks have mentioned that specialists can be booked for what seems like or may well be years in advance which can be extremely tough when it's preventing one from working or doing other "normal" life activities.
We're pretty good at dealing with trauma cases in a reasonable time frame, broken limbs, etc seem to seldom be too much of an issue.
In the past 3 years or so there's been a epidemic of fentanyl overdoses here in southern BC. They're weekly in Penticton where our family works and we know it's welfare cheque day because of the ambulance sirens. The volume of overdoses is such that it absolutely will delay other folks getting surgery sometimes - as was the case with my late mother when she fell and broke her hip.
To be clear she did eventually get the surgery, but nonetheless the overdoses do tax our medical system to the point of stalling it sometimes. It's a situation that my LEO buddies have to deal with all the time too of course and it takes way, way too much of their time too.
Before leaving fentanyl, I often wonder aloud if the politicians spent even a tenth of the time dealing with that issue rather than trying to disarm us because a dozen gang members choose illegal firearms to remove one another from this mortal coil what the results might be, you know? There were by the way 1226 fentanyl OD's in BC in 2017, 1337 in 2018 and 702 in 2019 - daunting math any way you slice it, no?
Lastly to the OP's question, I'd say that it would really depend on the region of Canada vs the individual state and possibly region within that state as to whether our system would be preferable or not. I suppose that as with most things in life, we tend to prefer to stick with the devil we know don't we?
All the best to you in 2020 sir.
Dwayne
