U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadians would have “much better” health coverage if Canada became the 51st state.

He made the remarks during a briefing in North Carolina, where he toured areas struck by Hurricane Helene on Friday.

“I would love to see Canada be the 51st state,” he said. “The Canadian citizens, if that happened, would get a very big tax cut – a tremendous tax cut – because they are very highly taxed.”

“They’d have much better health coverage. I think the people of Canada would like it,” said the president.

  • @wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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    863 months ago

    No thank you.

    My wife went to the ER after hurting her foot, it was an hour wait and the only cost was $40 for a set of crutches.

    I like our system.

    • @seang96@spgrn.com
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      413 months ago

      In the US you’d have a 4 to 6 hour wait, $3000 to hospital for using the ER, $2000 for the doctor, and if there were scans and such a $$$$$ for using them! Oh also they will take months to bill you but also send it to debt collectors if you don’t pay it for a month so then all of your personal data is sold and you get harassed to pay your debt!

    • @Someone@lemmy.ca
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      213 months ago

      Agreed. My fiancee had some pregnancy complications that resulted in numerous visits to the ER, including one that then required ambulance transfer to a bigger hospital an hour away and a 2 week stay there. One of the weeks she had to share a room and I couldn’t stay overnight, but I was set up with a social worker who arranged a paid for hotel room for me a couple minutes away. Overall, I ended up paying $10 for parking at the big hospital (the social worker gave me a pass after I paid the first day), and maybe $20-30 on some really good Nanaimo bars from the lobby coffee shop. The family we shared the room with was in a similar situation, but since they lived further away they were flown in by air ambulance from their hospital, also at no cost.

      • @wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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        43 months ago

        It was a sprain just before Christmas so they gave us crutches she needed for a week, she’s at probably 80% better now.

        We can go on evening walks again, so it seems to be healing well.

        • @JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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          43 months ago

          Ah good to hear she’s on the mend. Well just to note for any future injuries, boots are way better. I used crutches for a day before adding the boot so I could go to work and stuff. They didn’t even give me the option initially and I’m not sure why. It was far more comfortable having it on and I never wanted to take it off!

          • @wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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            23 months ago

            That would make sense. I was wrapping her foot in a tensor bandage daily for a few weeks and the pressure really helped.

    • sunzu2
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      183 months ago

      That’s really the only public figure you can trust on issues of health insurance in the US, everyone lese is lying as First Lady Trump’s statement confirm… Again.

  • Miles O'Brien
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    583 months ago

    Funny, because I know plenty of people in Ohio who have gone to Canada specifically for better and more affordable medical treatment.

  • @vastard@lemmynsfw.com
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    473 months ago

    You keep your $1,300 insulin. I like my access to vaccines and $0 hospital stays.

    “Mr. Trump, fuck off” will be the universal response of the western world before March.

  • Riskable
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    413 months ago

    When he says, “They’d have much better health coverage” he’s talking about the rich people. Not normal people!

    He doesn’t consider normal people, people.

    • @GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      23 months ago

      The rich people won’t have any better coverage, either. I know someone who had his daughter flown to the Mayo Clinic for mono. Yes, her case was very bad, yes, they were Canadian, no, that’s not an option that is available to the majority of us, and no, being part of America won’t appreciably improve their options more than that.

  • @pubquiz@lemmy.world
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    293 months ago

    I’d get shot, dead. As a Canadian I would be bound to defend the country and will murder as many america invaders and Quislings as possible, So Id be killed for it - just the way it’d go,

  • What is with the huge amount of idiots who would rather pay hundreds or thousands a month in insurance and healthcare costs just to save a couple hundred a year in taxes? Its actually unbelievably dumb.

    • @ControllerCat@lemmy.ca
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      83 months ago

      Yank here. So, we don’t have broad public healthcare because it keeps middle class people terrified of losing their white collar jobs. It also appeals to American racism, putting barriers up for people of color and the working poor to get equal treatment. Many Americans would happily screw themselves over to ensure someone else (they hate) has it worse.

      We have hours long lines at private urgent care, and seeing a general practice doc takes 3 to 6 months of wait time (if you’re lucky). Also, I’m queer. If The U.S. did have broad public healthcare, it would instantly be weaponized against all LGBTQ+ folks.

      Tldl, in the States it’s mostly about keeping the middle class terrified of losing their jobs, and ensuring there are working-poor people to sneer at.

      • Yeah i get why the lobbyists want it. I dont get why the answer from so many citizens seems to be “i dont want my taxes to go up”. Like bro youre paying ten times the amount now that you would in any tax increase.

        • bitwolf
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          23 months ago

          Dude the tax meme for American voters drives me insane.

        • @ControllerCat@lemmy.ca
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          13 months ago

          A lot lf Americans just don’t think about it that way. There’s a multitude of reasons based more on sentiment and group social pressure than the obvious math.

          Many Americans have a great deal of personal optimism to the tune of “well I’m not sick right now”. It’s a gamble that everyone loses, but in the short term you keep more money. It speaks to the belief that personal heath is a moral virtue (or failing), therefore a moral person shouldn’t have to pay for immoral people’s “bad choices”. And, if someone didn’t save enough money to invest in their own health, that’s also a moral failure.

          There’s also terror of appearing too feminine. Care, either receiving it, or giving it to others, is feminine coded for a lot of Americans. So, paying into (and participating in) a broad public healthcare system becomes a crisis of masculine self (and group) identity. sarcasm You wouldn’t want people to think you’re a sissy right? sarcasm

          Er, sorry for the wall of text.

    • @ilega_dh@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      Won’t you think of the poor healthcare execs? How will they afford their home in Aspen???

  • Swordgeek
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    283 months ago

    The media needs to stop reporting ‘neutrally’ on this bullshit, and call it out as expansionist lies.

    • Maple Engineer
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      93 months ago

      The owners of the media support Trump. When this shit is all over the oligarchs need to be in jail and their wealth given back to the people.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      13 months ago

      Eh. At that point you’re reading someone’s polemic. I find myself basically filtering out the opinion and adjectives again when I read those kinds of things, to get back just the facts.

      I wouldn’t call it better in any way, but if you’re as rich as Trump I guess it might be. The article concludes with the average US health payment prominently in it’s own paragraph.

  • @Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I spent thirty years in the States and seven years now in Canada. I can say with absolutely certainty that the US system is fucked. I’ve never paid a dime in Canada.

    • @fourish@lemmy.world
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      183 months ago

      I got major surgery in Canada. I took out my wallet to show them photoID. Then I put it away.

      My entire, full bill for surgery? I paid for parking.

  • acargitz
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    3 months ago

    He’s preying on some real issues with our system, such as the chronic lack of primary preventative care for the majority of the population in places like Montreal. When it takes months to see a doctor who rushes you, the private options prevalent in the US start sounding attractive.

    So let’s make sure this fool has no leg to stand on by properly funding our public healthcare system, treating our healthcare workers right, and by reducing the barriers to the recognition of foreign healthcare workers’ credentials.

    • @WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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      63 months ago

      That just sounds exactly like the US system though but you have to pay for it. My girlfriend has been dealing with medical stuff lately and was being bounced around between places with a month or more waiting time between each one. And whenever something came up that she would want to ask her primary care provider about it would be a few months for an appointment. The US system as far as I can tell doesn’t really have much better wait times yet people still act like it’s better here when my experience is it very much isn’t.

    • @neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      23 months ago

      Isn’t private healthcare still an option? Not that it should be the case, but I’d much rather pay a thousand a month (which is cheap) for my family to have prompt access to primary care and virtually nothing (?) for hospital trips, specialist etc.

      I’m not sure how it works in places with UHC, and my job pays 100% of my insurance now, but a few years ago I was paying $1200 a month where my employer split the cost and still had to pay $300 for every doctor visit for me and about $50 for my son. Anytime any of us were in the hospital we had to ask at every step how much something would cost because we’ve ended up with a few hospital bills totaling up to crippling debt that we’ll never get out of.

      Even with my insurance costing me nothing now I still pay ~$200 for every doctor visit because we never hit out deductible of ~$6000 which keeps getting raised every few months. We definitely could hit that deductable but we’d still end up owing money for every little thing. I avoid going to the doctors because we can’t afford it. We have to save for any tests/procedures at this point, I’ve been putting off an echo and stress test that I’m supposed to get every 6 months for about a year and a half, my heart medication just doubled in price, an ultrasound for my pregnant wife cost us $800 last month and for some reason it didn’t apply towards our deductible.

      • acargitz
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        3 months ago

        Paying 1k$ a month for doctors is completely ridiculous in Canada. I’m comfortable right now but that would completely break my budget.

        It is an option I guess for the rich rich, but for the vast majority that’s just not a thing that we’d consider “reasonable”, much less “cheap”.

        Employer health insurance covers dental, drugs, eyes though. So people that don’t have it struggle and that’s not nothing. Which is why the government just passed some limited coverage but it’s not universal as it should be.

        So you see: completely different mindset.

        • @Someone@lemmy.ca
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          23 months ago

          Yeah, in BC when we used to have premiums it was only $75/mo and if I remember correctly it scaled up from $0 if you made below about $10000 to the full $75 around $30000.