Canada’s Healthcare Gridlock—Why More Private Options Could Rescue Us All

It’s August 2025, and Canadians are lining up—not just at Tim Hortons, but for cancer care, MRI scans, and basic surgeries. We’ve built a healthcare system as beloved as hockey and “sorry,” but lately, a question echoes across the land: What good is “free” access if you lose your health waiting for it?

Let’s pull off the Band-Aid: our single-tier, government-run system is bursting at the seams. Enter the private tier. Detractors cry “unfair” and clutch their pearls at the thought, but in reality, bringing more market-principled private options to Canadian healthcare could be the solution we’ve been too polite to talk about.

But first let us lighten the mood with today’s sponsor:

In 2010, a Grammy-winning artist passed on investing $200K in an emerging real estate disruptor. That stake could be worth $100+ million today.

One year later, another real estate disruptor, Zillow, went public. This time, everyday investors had regrets, missing pre-IPO gains.

Now, a new real estate innovator, Pacaso – founded by a former Zillow exec – is disrupting a $1.3T market. And unlike the others, you can invest in Pacaso as a private company.

Pacaso’s co-ownership model has generated $1B+ in luxury home sales and service fees, earned $110M+ in gross profits to date, and received backing from the same VCs behind Uber, Venmo, and eBay. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Invest for $2.90/Share

_{Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.}

Suppose you need an MRI to confirm whether a mysterious pain is harmless or deadly. In Canada today, waiting times for MRI scans can approach a year or more in some regions, with averages commonly exceeding four to six months (16-23 weeks) and even longer waits reported, far beyond the recommended 30-day ideal. For those in urgent need, these delays are more than an inconvenience—they can be deadly. Cancer treatments and surgeries for serious conditions face similar or worse delays.

Now, here’s where two-tier healthcare emerges: if you can shell out for a private clinic or have insurance to cover faster scans and treatments, you bypass the agonizing wait and get prioritized. Some call this “queue-jumping”—but to the patient dreading a cancer diagnosis, it’s common sense. Allowing paid options takes pressure off the public system, shortens waits for everyone else, and, most importantly, saves lives. Yet, critics insist on treating this pragmatic fix like a national betrayal.

Let’s be honest. The real losers in a single-tier system aren’t just “the rich” who want to pay— it’s everyone who can’t afford to wait. The two-tier debate is full of strawmen: “But if we let people pay for care, the poor will get nothing!” In reality, countries with blended systems like Australia and parts of Europe deliver superb universal care while letting people buy extra speed or comfort. Their public systems thrive because private options lighten the load.

In Canada, prolonged delays mean a suspicious lump might turn cancerous before you’re even scanned. For cancer care, every week of delay can reduce survival odds, so the real “unfairness” is letting people suffer—sometimes fatally—under a system strangled by bureaucracy and underfunding.

Why is it so hard to see a specialist here? One reason: our doctors and nurses earn significantly less than their U.S. peers. Constrained by government-set public wage schedules, many top professionals are packing up for higher-paying jobs in the States, taking their skills and expertise with them. This “brain drain” drains morale, burns out medical staff, and ultimately leaves Canadians waiting in ever-longer lines.

How do public systems like Canada’s compete? Usually, they don’t. More private investment in healthcare would mean not just more options for patients, but higher wages and more opportunity for medical professionals to stay and thrive here—good for them, and great for their patients.

Opposition to privatization is couched in noble language about “equality” and the Canadian identity. But equality achieved by making everyone wait, and sometimes suffer, is hardly worth celebrating. It’s not just about rich vs. poor—it’s about choice, and the freedom to buy a service yourself if the public queue is too long.

Critics warn about “Americanization,” but the reality is stark: the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on market-driven innovation in healthcare, and many better-performing systems in the developed world freely blend public and private options. By locking ourselves into a single-tier, we risk losing both high-quality care and medical talent while calling it “fair.”

A two-tier system isn’t just about the wealthy getting perks. It’s about giving everybody more choice, cutting waits, freeing up public resources, and keeping homegrown doctors and nurses in Canadian hospitals—not driving ambulances out of the parking lot to Buffalo. The public system isn’t going anywhere, but without private innovation and market incentives, it can’t keep up with modern needs—or retain talent.

If you’re done waiting and ready for honest debate about healing our healthcare, subscribe to CanAmericaNews. We’re not afraid to deliver the hard truths, the real numbers, and solutions that put your health—and your choice—before outdated dogma.

Subscribe to CanAmericaNews now. Because when it comes to healthcare, waiting isn’t just inconvenient—it’s dangerous. Let’s fix the system before you need it.

This updated article reflects the reality that MRI waits in Canada can edge toward a year or longer, underscoring the urgency for expanded private options and market principles to alleviate the public system's crushing delays.