[Snowyman]

One way to judge the two systems is to see how many US doctors are moving to Canada to practice medicine (I've never heard of any), compared with Canadian doctors heading south to the US.

More physicians returning to Canada The number of physicians who moved abroad decreased by 57% over the past five years. Furthermore, for the third year in a row, the number of physicians returning from abroad in 2006 was greater than the number leaving Canada (238 compared to 207). CIHI’s study also found that most of the overall increase in physicians is attributed to an increase in Canadian-trained physicians. The number of doctors trained in Canada grew by 5.2% between 2002 and 2006, compared to an increase of less than 1% (0.7%) in the number of foreign-trained physicians. Doctors trained abroad come primarily from the United Kingdom and Ireland, South Africa, India, Egypt and the United States.

http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=media_25oct2007_e

[SuziQ]

The number of physicians coming from abroad was 1% of the total. I know some doctors from Canada, living in the US,and none of them are moving back. They're quite happy to be able to here, and able to practice, without the constraints of government health care.

The story also mentions the fact that the younger doctors coming up in Canada don't have quite the work ethic of the older doctors, and that it could create problems as the older doctors retire. Doesn't sound like a good situation to me.