Yes? Nobody's denying that it's easy to get very good medical care very quickly if you have enough money! That's of course, completely irrelevant to the topic of this discussion, or, if anything, emphasizes the inequality inherent in the American system.
Just adding context that when it comes critical medical care involving specialized care, the United States almost has no equal - not even close. Whether that is Level 1 trauma facilities, oncology facilities, cutting edge research laboratories or doctors with deep expertise in such fields, the United States is second to none.
This is not an oft brought point when discussing the merits of the U.S system despite its failings and short comings.
Also:
The Fraser Institute, a Canadian public policy think tank,
estimates that 52,513 Canadians received non-emergency medical
treatment in the U.S. and other countries in 2014, a 25
percent jump from the roughly 41,838 who sought medical care
abroad the previous year.
In citing those numbers in its 2015 report, "Leaving Canada for
Medical Care," the organization said difficulties in obtaining
timely medical care at home is, increasingly, leading Canadians
to seek it abroad. "It is possible [they] may have left the
country to avoid some of the adverse medical consequences of
waiting for care, such as worsening of their condition, poorer
outcomes following treatment, disability, or death," the report
says. "Some may leave simply to avoid delay and to make a quicker
return to normal life."
Canadians could expect to wait 9.8 weeks for medically necessary
treatment after seeing a specialist in 2014, the researchers found,
three weeks more than the time physicians considered to be
clinically "reasonable."[1]
[1]
Canadians Increasingly Come to U.S. For Health Care / Crossing the Border for Care
But, again, we’re not talking about how amazing the system is if you have money. We’re talking about how the system utterly fails to disseminate basic healthcare to the vast majority of people in a way that doesn’t destroy them.
There's also a scale that the United States has over all other OECD countries. It's by far the largest in population and therefore has more specialist equipment. A country like Canada with almost a tenth of the population will have less facilities.
