Many of your points are very valid..

Doctors in Canada do not pay malpractice insurance since the universal health care system came. The individual province they practice in covers them. At no direct charge to them.

Doctors are tracked in this regard though. Probably claims for negligence if more than average for whatever specialty they are in. Their billing number or ability to charge the system is pulled.

My guess is then they might go to another country as full or partial direct billing to a patient has not been allowed in Canada.

You probably have an ideal of where they may land up with high malpractice rates basically working for the insurance industry. Or at least a lot of their income flowing in that direction.

I need a cat scan every six months to make sure the stainless steel mesh inside me has not moved. What surprised me is the hospital I use is 150 miles for all practical purposes from the American border. Normally the system has a few methods to make sure they have the right individual.

All of a sudden it seems security has been beefed up. This time there where very specific questions in only areas I would know the answers to. Normally there are just a few fairly common questions to identify a patient. Might have been a fluke but I wondered.

Some of the questions the last time went way beyond that. I have a suspicion that our pictures may become mandatory on the health services cards all too soon. For the first time in memory I saw in the news that two people where reciently billed for services they received. Neither was a Canadian or landed immigrant. One woman had married a Canadian. I do not know the story on the other one.

My guess is it has become too costly to provide non billed care for people that should not get it here has finally been recognized. I always had a suspicion perhaps some Americans close to the border might be getting their hands on Canadian health cards and coming over for treatment. Especially at the border towns. Was pretty easy to get a health card.

Kerry on our site has received medical care here when traveling as a tourist. I never thought to ask him if he was charged. Or his insurance company back home was billed. Or it was just free. His daughter is an American at a Canadian university and she is covered but has to pay a small monthly fee for it.