Joel, I didn't respond to you because you can't be convinced. My time is precious.
You didn't say anything about the Canadian vs US system. Just beating around the bush.
And Canadian system is not cheap at all. If I remember correctly, apart from US and Switzerland (and Norway), the Canadian system is fourth expensive per capita and the last in bang for the buck category (in OECD).
In 1997 they spent 77 billion CAD and they were spending 181 (2009) and 192 billion (2010) billion...I bet they'll crack 200 billion this year (GDP is less than 1.7 T). Has the system improved in any way? Has the access to doctors improved in these years? How many Canadians have no doctor to go to? Why do you defend the indefensible?
Let me give you some quotes:
The report also notes in 2010, Canadians on average saw an 18.2 week wait between an appointment with a family doctor and receiving treatment from a specialist, up 9.3 weeks from 1993.
link:
http://money.canoe.ca/money/business/canada/archives/2011/04/20110418-082936.html
Now, do you see a relationship between waiting times and cancer outcomes????
Your comment about the poor "having nothing to lose" was played over and over from Marx on. Are you talking about the roughly 50% of inhabitants who don't pay a dollar in income taxes?