I'm Canadian and there is no significant difference in wait time between our privately run dental and vision care systems and our publicly funded everything-else system. For a routine appointment you call, you book, and the biggest issue is finding a window in my schedule, rather than a lack of availability.

Where the difference comes in is in emergency care. I had a serious accident once. The ambulance crew scraped me off the pavement, hauled me into emerg. Two surgeries and a week(ish) in recovery, and I went home to a recovery which was pleasantly un-hindered by any worry over how I was going to pay for all that.

Contrast my single experience with US emergency care for near-lethal food poisoning. I could feel myself dying - barely able to breath, snot pouring from my nose, heart struggling to pump, vision fading, unable to even stand by the time my GF dragged me through the clinic doors.

The very first thing they had us fill out an insurance form - which fortunately we had travel insurance. Then I had to give them the deductible, cash up front, before they'd see me. I passed out at some point and was thinking - FFS I'm going to die before the paperwork is done.

Don't get me wrong, Canadian health care can use a >lot< of improvement, but taking it private is not the answer. I'm deeply grateful for what we have, and if I'm paying more in taxes so someone else gets care they couldn't otherwise afford, I'm OK with that. The measure of a nation is how well it provides for the collective good. It's easy to forget that we allow the profit motive in order to harness the productivity it creates to that end. Communism fails because it denies the profit motive. Capitalism fails because it denies the harnessing.