The real problem is that there are not enough doctors and they get paid too much.
Some people here think too much in terms of the bottom line. Not everything should be run from the perspective of finances with health care being a perfect example. It is bad for society if the mission statement of hospitals become in effect to make the most amount of money possible. It is better for society if their goals are to save people and to help them live better quality lives.
We need to graduate more doctors (both Canada and US). To do that we need to lower averages and increase enrollment. Engineers are smarter than doctors on the whole yet they don't have the same artificially high standards as doctors do when it comes to graduating students. (Doctors don't have to prove they are mathematically literate like engineers do which is a huge function of intelligence especially when it comes to logic and reasoning). It's a money making scam that the academic standards for doctors are so high. If you take two students, one with a 90% average and one with a 99% average, you can not predict which one will be a better doctor, because of marginal returns on intelligence at that level and the effect of other variables like a passion for helping people rather than a passion for gouging people in need and to make the most god damn money as is humanly possible. There are so many bad doctors that it shows that huge money as an incentive to only the best students (and the guys that make the top percentile in their youth aren't necessarily the smartest people in society just the most focussed at a young age) isn't the way to go.
Another problem, for us Canadians, is proximity to the US. We, in effect, have a two-tier health care system. I would love to see just a one-tier system so that the rich would have to force a huge change in the health care system or suffer the consequences just like everyone else. If the rich get what they want, even if it is costly, their attitude is always to fuck the poor. The poor are poor for a reason, and will always be fucked over by the minority of rich people when it doesn't have to be so.
