A new Gallup poll found that Americans now have the lowest-ever views of the U.S. health system

[Aristus]

47. Access issues are also better dealt-with in most countries that have a national system.

A lot of these countries, especially Canada and the Scandinavian nations, pay for medical students to attend school, the result being that they graduate as MD’s without no student debt of any kind.

In the U.S., MD’s are often on the hook for up to a quarter of a million dollars in student debt. So they go into specialty care, like cardiology or gastroenterology, where they can charge for expensive procedures, thereby being able to pay off their debts quicker. This tends to leave a deficit of primary care providers.

In return for medical students in the above countries having school paid for, they are usually obligated to serve in primary care at a clinic of the government’s choosing for a specific period of time.

As a result, Canada, for example, has plenty of primary care providers, but not enough specialty care providers. So they often come to the US for specialty care. This is often what prompts right-wingers to sneer. “See? Canadians are coming here for medical care! How great can their system be?”

As usual with these chuzzlewits, they’re ignorant of the fact that they’re here for specialist care, and that their provincial health insurance plan pays for it.