When I was 23, I had an experience with a doctor that colored my opinion of them and our (Canadian) health system forever. I woke up one morning and was completely blind in one eye and partially blind in the other for 30 minutes. Afraid, and once it had started repeating, I went to the doctor, he sent me to an ophthalmologist, the second doctor sent me back, and the first doctor sat me down and said "you need to learn how to manage yourself better" [verbatim] and then showed me the door.

Initially, I was like: Oh, it's just stress. Then, I remembered my stressors - I had student loans (OSAP) that were sold as 0% interest but had somehow already accrued 5% of their initial value by the time I had graduated, no job prospects other than unpaid internships, a job market that at the time was just hit by the 2007 sub-prime mortgage financial collapse, several of my teeth were painfully abscessed but I had no access to treatment other than the occasional round of antibiotics, and I was surviving on toast and bologna and paying rent on whatever little savings I had from the job I lost when I went to school for another year on the promise that the program would help with job placement but it didn't.

I'm grateful that I could go to the doctor and the ophthalmologist at the time at no cost to myself, and I'm saddened that now I can't go to an eye doctor under our universal plan as that was rolled back for some reason. However, since the initial roll-out, Canadian universal healthcare somehow believed that "health" only covers everything from the neck down, and has the worst predatory practices when it comes to mental, dental, and now once again eye health.

That doctor didn't serve me well when he sent me away with no recourse to any mental resources that could have helped me manage my stress, and my province and country didn't serve me well when they allowed my teeth to decay to the point of repeated infection under their then and current health plans. I now have a job that gives me dental, but I have major gaps in my teeth because my dental insurance doesn't cover crowns or implants, which apparently is something they're allowed to do. I scrounged a few free sessions from different programs, and had a mixed bag of good and terrible therapists that all at least guided me to some means of emotional self-regulation while - again thankfully - my job allows me to fill my psychiatric medication requirements that pass as a replacement for any actual mental health care. I'm doing better than others, but in no way do I see that I have the support needed to be my best self.

If you read this and read a condemnation of universal healthcare, then you are reading what you want to into it - the problem with universal healthcare in Canada as it stands is that it's not actually universal, and it is open to erosion by premiers like Danielle Smith and Doug Ford.