The reason is because of the high import duties, excise taxes, VAT and other taxes added on to pay for 'free" medical care "paid" for by the government. That's the main point frequently missed by those who support government paying for everything. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The people pay for everything one way or the other.
I won't wade into this discussion, but want to make a couple of comments (I was born and live in Canada). The above characterization of "free" medical coverage is loaded and basically incorrect way to describe the situation. That language is deliberately chosen to load the discussion, imo. Everyone knows it's not free, and it's silly to describe it that way. What we have in Canada, at least, is a nation-wide health insurance policy that we decided to buy for ourselves, nothing more. (To be accurate, it's actually 10 such systems, since each province administers its own.) There is a set of medical procedures that are covered for everyone in the country paid for out of general tax revenues, but if you want to call them premiums instead of taxes, go ahead if that makes you feel better. For some reason, people get their backs up when they hear the word taxes, but are somehow ok with fees and premiums. Whatever floats your boat. We can travel from province to province, get taken care of with no out-of-pocket expenses (with some exceptions), and the agencies involved figure out how to pay each other inter-provincially.
Almost everything we hear in the US media about Canadian socialized medicine and civil servants deciding who lives or dies is just plain stupid nonsense. Our doctors are all self-employed professionals, some are in individual practices, others in more complex arrangements. They just do most of their billing, not all, to one agency, simplifying their overhead.
Some people feel that they are better served by a system of private insurers, because, presumably, they "compete" to lower costs. I used to know something about the internal workings of insurance companies and that statements makes me laugh out loud.
On vacation once, I met a surgeon from Michigan and we started talking about how our medical systems differ. I am a layman, not an expert, but did my best to describe our system. He viewed the Canadian single-payer system as a godsend. He said that his greatest office overhead expense was catering to the different demands of all the different insurance systems that he had to deal with. He was disgusted at the amount of time he had to spend with insurance company staff debating the merits of his medical choices for his patients, calling it a huge bureaucratic interference in private matters, and it came from many different companies, each with their own agenda. He considered it the worst part of his job and consumed for too much of his time that should have been spent with patients. Of course, it's just one story.
One aspect of private insurers, and it happens with car insurance, is that you have to renew it periodically (typically, yearly) and at some point, if they consider you too great a risk, they refuse to renew, leaving you in the lurch. It's not unknown for companies to dump you as a client if you get really sick, I've heard/read the anecdotal evidence and I sincerely hope they are exaggerated stories. Personally, a system that allows companies to dump coverage precisely when it is most needed is repulsive.
