Blaming immigrants for the American healthcare failings is meaningless unless you have proof that they're the root cause of the dysfunction. It reads well on an Internet forum, but, like many things here, it ain't necessarily true.
I have experienced American health care. My wife dislocated her shoulder and we presented ourselves at the emergency department of a hospital in the Pacific Northwest. She received excellent care. It was the middle of the night and there were zero other patients present. We were fortunate that the head of orthopedic surgery was on duty and he realigned her shoulder quickly and professionally.
Two hours she was discharged, to the tune of $10K. Yup, ten thousand dollars. One line item was for a cloth sling that billed out at $150. Extortionate is the only word I can use to describe the cost of that event.
Driving through America, I'm astounded at the sight of billboards advertising hospitals. Really? Is this an good way to spend healthcare dollars? On advertising?
What is your experience of the Canadian health care system?
I wasn't blaming immigrants, I said they're part of the reason that the numbers look bad -- that we have bad numbers on things like child births. Well, if somebody has trekked up from Central America, and makes an illegal crossing through the Sonoran desert into the US, hoping to have her baby here as a so-called "anchor baby," the baby may have problems. Those are folded into our overall stats. In other words, we're dealing with literally millions of people who have severe "pre-existing conditions." As a reporter, I spent several months over a period of two or three years covering hospitals, and generally, as you experienced, the care is excellent. The problem is cost, but that's a separate problem. Under Obamacare, everyone is supposed to have insurance. Some evade the requirement, which isn't a problem for them (under the Obamacare rules) as long as they don't need trauma care. (Under Obamacare rules, if you have no insurance, if you evaded the requirement, and get cancer, you can then sign up for insurance under the rule that eliminates rejection of people for pre-existing conditions.) The problem with your wife, apparently, was that you didn't have insurance to cover a trauma here.
American care, by and large, is excellent; the American payments system is screwed up. I have my own example. I have hearing aids with a nipple-like device that covers the microphone in my ear, while the hearing aid itself sits above my ear. The nipple thing came off one of my hearing aids and got stuck deep in my ear canal. I had to go to an ER to have it removed -- took fifteen minutes, the invoice was $600; the only disposable used was a kind of napkin and two vinyl gloves. With Medicare, I paid $0. I agree that that kind of thing is absurd. When people complain about care (as opposed to payment) I don't think they're experiencing bad care, they're usually looking at stats, with numbers skewed by comparison to nation with cradle-to-grave insurance and also, very few needy immigrants with pre-existing conditions. I'm really tired of hearing how wonderful things are in a place like Finland, which, in 2019, took in 891 quota refugees. We take in 18,000 legal refugees; and tens of thousands of illegals.
As for my experience with Canadian medical care, my daughter went through two very long, very technical operations at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children back in the 90s. The work was excellent, the outcome as good as could have been expected. I think our total cost for the two operations was in the neighborhood of $45,000. The only other place in North America where the operations were done was in Texas, either Dallas or Houston (it was long enough ago that I can't remember which) and the out-of-pocket cost would have been close to triple. I spent a week in Toronto for each of the operations, and found it to be quite an interesting city. The only other situation in which I personally know about Canadian health care is that a friend went to a clinic in Northwest Ontario to have a musky hook taken out of his face. I have no idea what the charge was, but his private US insurance paid for it.
Which raises another question. Did your Canadian health insurance pay for your wife's trauma care?