I am US born but moved to Canada in 2007 with my Canadian wife and am a Dual Citizen, now live back in the US. I'm a reasonably healthy person and I hate doctors (nothing personal) so I avoid them (ironically) like the plague.

In 2007, I had, what I would consider good employer sponsored health insurance in the US. Premiums were reasonable, service was great when needed. Though I generally avoided doctors, my wife has had quite a few health issues, resulting in something like 6 surgeries in 13 months. We didn't go broke and my health insurance covered nearly all of it.

When we moved to Canada, we were in somewhat of a rural area but were in the city that had the regional hospital, so "health care" (the quotes are intentional) was close. I transferred my job laterally within the same company and my net income decreased slightly because of the difference in taxes, which actually includes health insurance so it was somewhat of a wash...

Now, for the "health care" in Canada... Sure, it's free... But you may not have an actual Doctor that you can schedule an appointment with for general checkups or minor issues. Doctors aren't always able to take new patients, so for anything that ails you, unless you're lucky enough to get a doctor, you get to sit in the Emergency Room for 6-10 hours. And for the Regional Hospital in our area, the Doctor actually goes home at 7p and is only on-call for life threatening issues. Emergency Rooms "treat the symptom" and tell you to follow-up with your Doctor, that you may not even have. But it's "free"...

Let's step it up... Say you have a cough. You're a smoker and not in the best of health though so when you go to the doctor (if you have one), they send you for a few basic "cold detection" tests that come back negative tell you to quit smoking and send you home.

A few months later the cough gets worse so they, again send you for a few basic "cold detection" tests AND take an x-ray but hey can't see anything on the X-Ray so they send you home with a few pills and tell you to quit smoking.

Over the next couple of months, the cough gets worse and it's impacting your life so you go back to the doctor and they run the "cold detection" tests again which come back negative and they send you for another X-Ray. Nothing shows up again so it's a few more pills, BUT it's time for a CT scan. Well, that's a 6 month wait because the nearest facility with a CT scanner is 2 hours away, but wait! That's a different province (state), so you'll actually have to go to the one that a 6 hour drive.

The CT doesn't show anything, but the cough persists and gets painful a month later. So you go back to your doctor and he pulls out the stops and sends you for an MRI, but that's another 6 month wait (if your lucky), AND it's actually a 12 hour drive for your 2am, Sunday appointment (no lie - 2am appointment on a Sunday - they run it 24/7).

The MRI shows it's Cancer that the government deems "untreatable," so you die three months later... From a spot on your lung the size of a dime where if it had only been caught a few months earlier, the outcome might have been different. This happened to my wife's father....

Now, things "may" be a little different in the city centers, but nothing happens quickly at the regional level.

But it's "free"... THAT is Canadian Health care... The GOVERNMENT decide what is treatable and who gets treated and when.

THAT SAID...
When my wife and I moved back to the US in 2016, I am absolutely appalled by the current health insurance system. The premiums are 3 times what they were in 2007 and it covers less. So, WTF?!?!

The US Health Insurance system was pretty good from my perspective in 2007, but now it IS BROKEN, very badly.

So, something needs to change but I do NOT believe that the Canadian system is the answer. I, again, live in a somewhat rural area in the US, so would again be burdened by the regional health care woes that we had in Canada.

I think some sort of two tier system is reasonable.

If you make less than a certain amount of money per year, you're automatically in the government health insurance program with no premium. If you make more than a "certain" amount of money, you can opt-in for the government program and you pay a premium. The more you make, the more the premium goes up but should be competitive with private health insurance.

Private health insurance should still be available and if you opt-OUT of the government program, you pay those premiums for your coverage.

A woman in New Bruinswick died the other day while waiting eleven hours in the emergency room, its not without its flaws, if we had private delivery with public money the system would be far more efficient.

I am so very torn on this issue and your example makes it even more difficult. I am inherently distrustful of big government. Sadly government would need to run a healthcare system like that and ours is corrupt, wasteful and bogged down in bureaucracy. I do see that it would be humane for everyone to have health care but I’m not sure how we could effectively and efficiently run such a program. I wish you well and I hope you can get the services and therapies that you need.