I’ve used the system pretty regularly. To be fair, I live in a small city (150,000) within the golden horseshoe, so definitely better care compared to many throughout rural areas.
In the past few years I’ve had the birth of a child including all the various follow ups and shots, a stress test, blood work to rule out several heart issues, a halter monitor test, an ultrasound of my heart, three sets of baseline blood work, and four family doctor appointments.
The biggest fee at each was parking.
I don’t disagree we have tons of room for improvement. Our contributions each year (ie personal amount of taxes we pay for healthcare in Ontario) have not been sufficient to keep up with the growing and aging population. We desperately need greater cancer screening and diagnostic services, as prevention and early detection can save billions in future chemo/rad or operations. Rural areas and family doctors need a rework, as many people are without one due to fewer and fewer docs entering that field.
That said, I would never take the US system over Canadas. The enormous stress illness would place on a family doesn’t seem worth it for the meager tax savings, and the low wait times seem to only be avoided in the US system by paying out of pocket, which is not feasible for many.
EVs make a difference for anyone in an area with low density. I live in the country relatively close to population centres, but it’s impossible for me to ever imagine transit being even near me.
We will literally always have a need for small, individual vehicles of some kind for most the population. If we could reduce that to one car, then supplement with transit, where available, or carpooling? Then also make that car an EV instead of ICE? That’s a huge emissions reduction