I'm a user of the Canadian health care system. In fact, I used it just two weeks ago for a routine checkup and some tests. My 92-year-old grandmother broke her hip in June and spent months in the hospital. She received excellent care from surgery to physio, all paid for by the BC Medical Plan. Now she's back in her own home, which she won't have to sell to pay her medical bills.

You can't evaluate health care systems by swapping anecdotes. This is a good example of the kind of information that journalists need to cover: The hard numbers for entire systems instead of just individual cases.

In order to cover comparative health care system stories, journalists need to know something about health care. Sure, it sounds frustrating to say that you have to wait 3 weeks for a routine knee MRI, but what percentage of the people who need MRIs eventually get them, and is there any measurable health benefit to getting an MRI on the same day vs. getting one a 3 weeks later?

American scare stories about the Canadian health care system always focus on people who are medium-sick who have to wait a long time for something they could probably get quicker in the USA if they had the money. They don't usually mention the guy who needs to wait for six weights to get a heart bypass got a lifetime of prompt primary care, and a lot of specialized cardiac assessment and treatment up to the bottleneck point. They don't usually mention that guy isn't stressing about losing his house, because his publicly-funded health insurance will pick up the bill for the entire procedure. He doesn't have to worry that his doctor didn't even suggest a bypass because the doctor knew he'd have no hope in hell of paying for it. (Studies show that a third of US healthcare professionals have deliberately refrained for mentioning beneficial treatments to patients who couldn't pay for them.)

Of course, journalists also have to know something about economics. Even if it's true that the Canadian health care system isn't as efficient as the US one, it's also true that Canada spends a fraction of what the US does. If we're asking what a US health care system on the Canadian model would be like, it's important to consider what the Canadian system could do if it had a little more money to spend.