Dear SASless
May I remind you, that the term "death panels" are a invention of your own Sarah Palin, talking about a very important bill in your own country? May I also remind you, that in a famous congressional hearing before the time of Obamacare, US health insurance companies admitted, that they denied life saving treatments to patients due to the cost and as a results these patients died?
The term death panels is a) a horrible choice of words and b) misleading. Under the Canadian system, when the patient can not take a decision, somebody else has to step in. Normally some other family member. If this person does not agree with the doctors, especially, if the doctors want to continue treatment and the next of kin thinks, that palliative care is the way to go, some sort of commission will look at the case and decide, what is best for the patient. This is actually a quite common procedure in many countries, where the will of the patients is decisive for the choice of treatment. Unfortunately your own politicians and press have perverted the discussion to a point, where it is impossible to have an adult and informed discussion about what to do with very ill patients, who can not express their will or even if they can.
Their is no such thing as rationed healthcare either. But anybody with common sense can understand, that the capacity of a health system must not provide every treatment at a moments notice. Sometimes one has to wait a few weeks for treatment. That is for several reasons. Everybody who has ever been in a waiting room of hospital with a common cold knows, that cases are treated due to severity. You came in by helicopter unconscious loosing blood, you are treated immediately, you jogged in with a hurting finger, you grab a coffee and wait. Same goes for more complex treatments.
Many countries have health care systems like Canada. Most of them work pretty well. The whole of Europe does a pretty good job at it (but we are also extremely good at complaining), not perfect, but we do not let people die, due to cost. We have the principle, that a society has to protect the weakest.
Before you come up with isolated cases I will repeat: It does work pretty well, but it isn't perfect. There is lots of room for improvement, but I think everybody around here will agree, that we prefer our system with universal healthcare for everybody at a reasonable price to society, to your system, which is twice as expensive to the society, compared to the second expensive country, but "lets the free market play" and yours does not even provide better care. Live expectancy in the US is way, way lower than in Canada or any European country. Even some second world countries have a higher ones.