Canadians must be smarter than us — their health care is great

On a recent vacation, my wife and I met the wife of a Canadian physician. We took the opportunity to find out more about the Canadian health-care system. We asked her if doctors in her country were happy with their treatment and compensation. She was very kind and proceeded to tell us that it is very much like it is here. She said that they lived on the coast in an $800,000 home that they are almost finished paying for. They travel extensively with their six kids, with the most recent trips being to Europe and South Africa. They own the building that her husband's office is in. All of their children attend a private school. Their lifestyle seemed to be pretty good, so we continued by asking how good the medical care was in her country. She told us that it was very good. Her husband, she said, was able to spend as much time as he deemed appropriate with each patient. She related one experience they had with their 12-year-old son. He had a neurological infection that was too complicated to treat in the remote part of the province where they lived. He was taken via a medical helicopter to a more specialized location two hours away, where he was kept in the neuro-ICU for three days with round-the-clock specialists.

After answering all of our questions, this kind lady posed a question for us: Why hasn't the United States switched to a similar health-care system? This, I thought, was a very good question. I am a computer programmer by trade, but I spent a portion of my career on a population-science research team at a nearby university. This led me to wonder why the Canadians are able to have a successful universal single-payer health-care system and we don't seem to be able to do so here in the United States. Are they more intelligent than us as a population, and if so, do they have a higher I.Q. than we do? Is this because they live farther north than we do? My theory is that they must have a higher I.Q. than we do because they live farther north than we do.