Once again you are presenting anecdotal data.
"Scores of canadians crossing the border".
Studies show that
only 0.5% of Canadians come to the U.S for healthcare:
http://www.vox.com/2016/10/9/13222798/canadians-seeking-medical-care-us-trump-debate
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/21/3/19.full
"They also tracked Canadians' behaviors by examining data from the National Population Health Survey, where 18,000 Canadians were asked if they sought medical treatment in the US. "
Only 90 of those 18,000 Canadians had received care in the United States; only 20 of them had done so electively.""
Here is a great article, balanced, discussing the pros and cons of Canada healthcare:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fa...-swarming-the-border-to-get-better-healthcare
Just to fact check your MRI Statement:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2653696/
" For instance
, Japan and the United States have 35.3 and 19.5 MRI units per million population, respectively, whereas Canada has only 4.6."
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/...-30-en&_csp_=1bfa3f1fdc0c4d743015553f4aace77a
Canada: 8.0 MRI units per million
USA: 26.2 MRI units per million
For interest sake, Japan
has 41 MRI units per million. And they have universal healthcare, right?
You also state: "But Canada lags far behind many Western nations in technological adaptation."
Well according to OECD stats, Greece and Italy have almost the same number of MRI units per million (21.7) as US (26). So I guess that means Greece and Italy's healthcare is almost on par with USA, and much better than Canada (8.0) and England (5.6) because of MRI ratio right? And that means Japan must be the BEST because they have MRIs everywhere, right? Its not. Its about outcomes. Who cares how many MRI units there?!? I mean I don't have data, but I wouldn't be surprised if places like Qatar and Dubai have MRI ratios of 100 per million. But again, that doesn't mean they are healthcare gurus either. The only people that should be concerned about MRI ratios are the dudes that make MRI machines and Radiologists ($ reasons). What patients/citizens care about is the healthcare outcome.
I am sorry to hear about your acquaintance, that is obviously terrible news. But again, thats n=1. I'm sure there are pain docs around US that miss out on stuff like that. That has nothing to do with socialized health care vs. private health care. Thats just bad medicine. I cant imagine that for 12 months the pain doc (or PMD) did not pick up on red flag symptoms of sarcoma, like weight loss, fatigue, night sweats, fevers, etc. Its not like the pain doc wanted MRI but couldn't get it. I mean, thats the thing, even in the UK/NHS (which is much "poorer" than Canadian healthcare), if you had red flag symptoms, you WILL get MRI next day. Thats my argument, when it comes to life threatening illnesses, UK and Canada are on par with USA in outcomes. With elective his replacement...not so much, I agree. So missing out on sarcoma for 1 year is just practicing bad medicine. I'm sorry. And this is why NHS/UK produce the best doctors. They focus on primary, preventative care. Primary Care doctors in the UK are actually highly respected, and highly paid. Because england realized that it is much cheaper to prevent HTN/Diabetes than to do CABGs.
Here are some stats to show USA ranking pretty low with regards to outcomes, much lower than Canada:
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/files/hcp/health/health2012_healthind_tbl_lg.png
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/health.aspx
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/artic...have-the-best-health-care-system-in-the-world
"About 75 percent of Americans said the health care system required fundamental changes; in contrast, 50-63 percent of Europeans were happy with their systems.
Americans in fact wait longer than most Europeans to see a primary care doctor: 63-76 percent of Europeans see a doctor within one to two days, compared with 48 percent of Americans; only Canada scores worse (41 percent)."