What Canada taught Bernie Sanders about health care

A trip to Toronto reveals a hard truth about bringing single-payer to America.

Sarah Kliffsarah Oct 31, 2017, 8:00am EDT

Excerpts:

It was time, the senator decided, to see what the Canadian system looked like in action. So he shuttled from conference rooms to exam rooms, meeting with doctors, patients, and hospital executives. He brought four reporters and many more photographers and videographers in tow.

There are massive policy obstacles to bringing a single-payer system to the United States. But there is also a more fundamentally philosophical obstacle: Americans haven’t decided whether health insurance is a right. We haven’t made up our minds that the government ought to guarantee coverage for all citizens to begin with.

On his Canada trip, Sanders seemed to recognize that core to a system like Canada’s is a belief, by the people, that all other people ought to have equitable access to health insurance. Sanders is bullish that this belief exists to a wide extent in the United States too.

“Frankly, in the United States, I think most people do believe it is a right and it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or if you’re poor,” Sanders says.

But polling and reporting suggest otherwise. They show that belief doesn’t seem to exist in the United States right now. The question is whether Sanders can change that, whether he can persuade Americans to see health care the way he does — and the way Canadians do too.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/31/16566450/bernie-sanders-canada-health-care