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We have a wonderful health care system here if: (a) you have a family doctor, (b) you need emergency care in a major urban centre, or (c) you have only minor or life threatening ailments.
There are hundreds of thousands of people (equates to millions in US terms), who do not have a family doctor, including me (I lost mine when I had to relocate to another province and the waiting list in this city is a minimum of five years - which means 5 to 8 hour waits at an after hours clinic or hospital emergency room).
Very few communities outside of the cities have adequate emergency room services. They are under staffed, under equipped and capable of handling only basic cardiac arrest and broken bone issues. Most trauma cases have to be immediately taken to the cities, often hundreds of miles away.
We do a great job of major surgery of an emergent nature, such as angioplasty, heart bypass, accident trauma, cancer removal. However, any major surgery which is not critical, can lead to waits of a few months to over a year. Hip replacements, knee replacements, eye cataracts, many heart bypass operations. Diagnostic procedures are also significantly delayed for cost control reasons, eventhough there are machines laying idle for long periods each day.
The simple reality is that the government ban on private surgical care has created a cap on supply which has caused significant rationing and has not controlled costs. The government is prepared to let people die in order to preserve the socialist notion of “equal” health care, ignoring the fact that the upper middle class, rich and connected (including politicians) can jump on a jet to the US and buy their health care while the rest of us rot on the queue. Socialism always leads to inequities far more severe than those which result from capitalism. And, unlike capitalism, you can’t work harder in a socialist system to get ahead. All you can do is try to join the party in power and hope to get preferential treatment ahead of the unwashed masses.