Canada’s health care system may be imperfect, but when you’re coming from the U.S., it sure looks good.

I immigrated to Canada from the U.S. seven years ago, a 9/11 refugee from the toxic aftermath in downtown Manhattan, a baby in my belly, and a 5-year-old son in tow. Canada took me in. For that, I’ll always be grateful. And although I romanticized Canada for many years after that early October night in 2001 when I first came down the escalator in the Vancouver International Airport and later smelled the clean invigorating air that was like medicine after the poisonous World Trade Centre fumes, I don’t romanticize it today.

I don’t romanticize the health system here. It has its faults. But I’ve lived with the American system and it has worse faults.

I was recently reminded how different the two systems are. It happened that I was throttling down a slope on Blackcombe Mountain, in Whistler, B.C., no prayer of snow plowing to a halt, when I hit black ice and seemed to take off into the air, shedding my skis and all control. I hurtled down onto bindings and lay in the snow assessing the damage. It felt like the binding had lacerated my thigh, but I didn’t see blood.

By the time I got back to Vancouver I had a black bruise edged in a sickly red colour that stretched from thigh to knee. I went to the emergency room to get it checked out and there learned my insurance had lapsed. As an American who hasn’t lived in Canada long enough to take it for granted, my heart sank. In the U.S., this would have signaled a very large financial setback. I realized I had just had an operation the month before, and that this, too, would have gone uncovered. I expected the nurse to tell me to get lost. No insurance, no treatment.

“Of course we’ll see you anyway,” the nurse told me with a smile, and ushered me to the waiting room where a jovial doctor surveyed the damage, congratulated me on having strong bones, and told me there was nothing he could do other than subscribe a few painkillers. On my way out, the nurse gave me forms to get my insurance reactivated.

Why was I uninsured? When I became landed last fall, I had let this piece of paperwork fall through the cracks. Would I, and my two kids fall through the cracks now, too?

I filled out the forms, and sent them in. A week later, I got a call from Vancouver Coastal Health’s billing office.

A woman named Michelle informed me that she had a bill for $301 and asked me about my insurance. I explained. She told me I should call MSP and ask them to backdate my reactivation so that the hospital bill would be covered.

“They might really do that?” I said.

“Of course,” she said.

I called the MSP office, waited briefly, and then got through. The woman on the other end of the phone had an attitude of helpfulness – the polar opposite of the way American insurance representatives greet customers, if you can even get them on the phone.

I told her my situation, apologizing for not having taken care of it earlier. She asked how long I’d lived in Canada. When I told her I had been here eight years, she assured me that I was covered, even if my payments had lapsed. She told me to call the Vancouver Coastal Health and let them know.

It would be resolved within the next six weeks. I shouldn’t worry, she said. I was in Canada.