Canada has a vat also, it was 17% 30 years ago, don’t know now. The waiting period for major surgeries was well over a year. Many Canadians just crossed over the boarder to the US and had surgeries.
I had a cabin in Canada for years and got to know the locals quite well. Our neighbor's wife had a heart attack and the closest hospital was in North Bay, 30 miles south. They did a preliminary check, but said she would need to go to Sudbury for a complete exam, which is another 70 miles farther away. They said she "probably" needed a heart bypass and valve replacement, so they referred her to Toronto, which is a little over 250 miles south of her. She went and they confirmed that she needed major surgery and scheduled her operation...a wait of 17 MONTHS.
She died from another heart attack about 5 weeks later.
I read somewhere that Seattle hospitals performed over 57,000 major surgeries on Canadians and they paid for it with their own money. Guess that "free" healthcare Hillary touted years ago isn't all that great.