"Pervasive" sounds like an overstatement. Most conditions don't have waiting lists. But a few do. In the medical field, I don't think it's possible to give peo

"Pervasive" sounds like an overstatement. Most conditions don't have waiting lists. But a few do. In the medical field, I don't think it's possible to give people everything they want, because some people want everything done to keep them alive but some treatments are horrendously expensive. Any funding system is therefore going to have some sort of shortfall; someone isn't going to get everything they want. The best that can realistically be done is to ensure that the shortfalls between want and get are never too severe, and are generally distributed in some fair and sensible way. As far as I can tell, the Canadian system meets those criteria. To be clear, I do think the Canadian system could be improved. To give just one example, I think it should be legal to pay for your own medical procedures out of pocket. If you have the funds to pay the full freight, who are we to stop you? But that would mean a two-tier system, one for the rich and one for the rest of us, which is currently politically unacceptable in Canada.