Canada’s model for health care is the envy of the world. In the U.S. Donald Trump is tearing theirs apart and Alberta has a leader that supports the American model. Millions of Americans just lost access to basic coverage under Donald Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill.” And I can’t stop thinking about it, because I know exactly what it means when a health system works… and when it doesn’t.
This is a very short version of a very long story. There were dark nights, painful setbacks, near-deaths, and small mercies. I make it sound neat here, but it wasn’t. Not even close. Still, you’ll get the gist.
Of course we have had our share of emergency visits and surgeries over the years but our family’s medical journey escalated in 2020, before covid vaccines, when my healthy husband, at only 55, was hospitalized with COVID. He survived, barely, but that moment marked a turning point. His health was never quite the same again.
In October 2022, we were hit again, this time, far harder. He had been feeling unwell for months, and finally, he collapsed. Scans showed masses across nearly all his abdominal organs: liver, pancreas, spleen, gallbladder, colon. A palliative care doctor told us it was likely terminal metastatic cancer. “Prepare for end of life,” they said. But within a day, chemistry results revised the diagnosis: Aggressive High Grade Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma stage 4. It wasn’t good news, but better than originally thought.
Chemotherapy began immediately and the treatment nearly killed him. There were two drug-resistant staph infections, kidney failure from antibiotic toxicity, pulmonary embolisms, and malnutrition.
Aggressive chemotherapy continued and by April the grapefruit-sized tumors had shrunk to the size of walnuts. Some were gone altogether. He was sick from chemo, his 6’1 body weighed just 135 lbs but he was alive.
Then in March 2024, our youngest son, just in his twenties, with a career dependent on his eyesight, woke up with almost no vision in one eye. His optometrist saw him immediately and diagnosed a retinal detachment. Within 15 minutes, we were rushing to a retinal surgeon, one of the best in the country, on-call that day by chance. Five hours later, he was in surgery. The surgeon chose a more painful but more effective technique to preserve his vision, because he understood what was at stake for a young man whose eyes are his livelihood. There was no invoice. No haggling. No deductible. Just… care.
Then just 8 weeks later, June 2024, and we nearly lost my husband again. He’d been working outside in the heat, still thin and depleted from his cancer ordeal. He collapsed. No pulse. No breath. Cardiac arrest.
Our son, still recovering from eye surgery was home. His training from the Canadian Armed Forces kicked in. He began CPR immediately. EMS arrived in 9 minutes. Firefighters shortly after. Forty minutes passed with no signs of life. They were preparing to call his death.
And then… a gasp. Once at hospital he was intubated, placed in a medically induced coma, and against all odds, he woke up days later, dazed but intact. Only 10% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests end in survival. Almost none after 40 minutes. He beat the odds, because of immediate CPR, and because our system responded.
Since then, he has had several cardiac procedures, including the installation of a cardiac device that will assist his heart if it fails again. And the system continues to hold him. There are still follow-ups. Still supports. Still care.
I’ve said many times: I was able to fight for my family because I’m resource-driven, maybe a little relentless, and am English first language. That matters. It shouldn’t, but it does. I could push, research, ask the right questions, and advocate. But even with those advantages, I still marvel that we got what we did, because I’ve seen what happens in countries where people don’t.
During this time I joined many online support groups, for cancer, cardiac arrest, retinal detachment. I’ve met people from around the world. Some in developing nations, yes. But what shocked me most were the stories from Americans.
People denied life-saving surgery because of co-pays. Young people going blind because of insurance loopholes. People dying because they couldn’t afford the heart devices.
This isn’t anecdotal. This is systemic.
The United States is not failing at health care, it is succeeding at a system that was never built to care for everyone in the first place.
It brags about innovation while millions are locked out. It sells the dream of opportunity while robbing people of the basic chance to survive.
Here in Canada, we complain about hallway medicine and long waits, and we should. We need to keep fighting for improvement. But we must never forget the alternative. Because when cancer attacked my husband we were treated without question. When he flatlined for 40 minutes, they brought him back. When my son’s vision was slipping away, they saved it.
All of that happened because we live in a country where health care is a right, not a privilege. Doctors have told us that the health care costs for the past 5 years would have been between 4.5 and 5 million for what is some of the most expensive and resource intensive care our system offers. And our family didn’t have to decide between treatment and bankrupcy.
So no, I won’t stay quiet while Trump guts another piece of his country’s safety net and I won’t pretend Canada doesn’t have something worth defending here.
I am terrified for the millions of Americans now left without care, watching their lives shrink to the size of a co-pay. And I am profoundly grateful to live in a country where health care, however imperfect, is still based on need, not net worth. And don’t be fooled, Alberta, Danielle Smith is dragging us in that direction, and far too many are nodding along. We should be strengthening public care, not selling it off piece by piece.
Nancy's Notes 