How does healthcare work??? (insurance, to buy, university)

[joshisanonymous]

So I'm an American student at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I'm about to finish and leave Montreal but I have insurance that I had to buy through the university and I thought it would be a good idea to have a few things checked before I go since I won't have insurance for a while in the US.

I try to figure out how to find a doctor and from what I can gather it takes about a year to get a doctor, which means I can't make an appointment anywhere and instead have to rely on walk-in services. "Ok", I thought. I called my nearby CLSC, even though I'm not really sure exactly what a CLSC is, and they told me that I wouldn't be able to be seen there and sent me to a walk-in clinic. I kinda thought a CLSC was a clinic, but I guess not.

So I go to this clinic at 9am and they tell me they're booked for the whole day already. I had read online about people going to these clinics at noon and being seen in 45 minutes, so I thought this was weird, but I went back today anyway at 7:30am just to be safe. They weren't full this time, but they asked me for some card that I've never heard of, so I handed them my insurance card. I told them I was American and they told me I'd have to pay $160 cash to be seen, even with insurance, and they told me that it would cost even more at a hospital. My understanding of how fees worked here was that you pay up front, get a receipt, then your insurance reimburses you, but at a clinic also and in cash? In the US, all clinics are free, otherwise it's called a doctor's office. Is that not the case here? Or does "free" maybe mean something different?

I guess what I really want to know is how billing works here and if the fee I was gonna be charged was simply because I'm not Canadian or something. It seems a bit absurd to boast of universal healthcare if only people who have $160 cash that they won't need for however many weeks to months it takes to get reimbursed can be seen.