How the American health system is holding up compared to ours

Everyone's got an opinion on health care, especially now, as Omicron tests our various systems, exposing their vulnerabilities and overwhelming weaknesses in an avalanche of illness.

Few, however, have Jenna Meloche's perspective. 

She's a Canadian nurse working in U.S. hospitals. She lives in Ontario, has nearly two-dozen friends and family working in Canada's medical system, and works for an agency that's posted her in several American states through the pandemic.

So while health care may elicit potent emotions as a matter of national identity to some in Canada, and as a political litmus test to some in the U.S., for her it's everyday life.

And it's been exhausting lately. She said the health workers she knows in the U.S. are drained, mentally and physically, with many thinking of leaving the profession.

She's hearing friends ask: "When does this end? When do I lose my wit's end as a health-care provider and say, 'I need to step away from nursing for my wellbeing?'"

Yet she fears her Canadian colleagues have it worse. 

Even before the pandemic, she said, she worked in Ontario and saw a lack of tools and resources, feeling physically exhausted after shifts in a feeling she compared to "drowning."

Last week, another Ontario nurse wept during a CBC News interview and said staffing shortages would cost lives: "People are going to die because of a nursing shortage," said Birgit Umaigba.

But make no mistake: for-profit U.S. hospitals have their own struggles. The COVID surge is exposing different flaws in our widely different systems.

WATCH | Ontario nurse: People will 'die' because of staff shortages:

The strain on Canadian hospitals has prompted some analysis that Canada's more cautious attitude exhibited during the pandemic is driven by a hard practical truth that we simply can't keep things open like the U.S. has — because our health system would immediately crack.

The public data does support the idea that Omicron has filled Canadian hospitals faster, as its slightly fewer beds and far fewer nurses are buckling under current volumes. 

Stats Friday show non-ICU beds filled at 92 per cent in Ontario, 92 per cent in Alberta, and a staggering 152 per cent in Quebec, with cases still growing. The U.S. federal data Friday showed 79 per cent of beds filled nationwide, though jurisdictions have different ways of tallying beds.