It is the sacred cow of Canadian politics, and those in power who think they will tinker with it do so at their peril. For while the Canada Health Act—the legislation that provides universal health care for all its citizens—is revered by Canadians, paradoxically it is also heavily criticized, as each new survey shows. The term “crisis” tends to be overused today, but when applied to any medical or health report, people do take notice, as when it was recently estimated that some 5 million Canadians—about 850,000 of whom live in Ontario—do not have a family doctor. One quarter of...