Because we are self-employed, with premiums and deductibles, we pay about $9,000 US a year for our health insurance. With all of that money going just to the cost of the insurance itself, we would have some difficulty affording the co-pay of cataract surgery, should my (early stage) cataracts get to the point that they can be treated with surgery.

In practical terms, this amounts to "rationed health care". And we are far luckier than the millions of people in the US who have no insurance at all.

I would much prefer a system like the one in Canada to the one we have here.