There's an odd balancing act in Canada. On one hand it was doctors that fought (tooth and nail) against the introduction of "single-player" (we just call it Medicare) back in Saskatchewan in the 60s, including going on an (unsuccessful) strike. And they are continually in a battle with the provincial governments about rates, because in Canada (unlike the NHS in the UK) doctors are independent businesses and not on salary (unless they're in the hospital system I believe?)

On the other hand, doctors in Canada have become huge advocates of our Medicare system and a big political opponent of privatization and tiered medicine generally. Not completely, but on the whole and through their professional organizations. 50ish years of working with the medicare system and seeing its outcomes, and seeing the failure to our south I think has made our doctors advocates of our system.

Canada's system is by no means perfect. It's probably not a good model for the U.S. as it is. But it's much better than what the U.S. has.

In general wait times here are a product of restricted resources, not institutional inefficiences per se. MRI machines are expensive, and doctors ration their use based on evidence-based criterion. E.g. no MRIs and back surgeries for non-specific low back pain, etc. because medical science doesn't really support it.

It's also worth pointing out that it was a huge battle to get it here. A big struggle that was successful at the time because at that point Canada's left wing was much stronger, and we had no strongly entrenched insurance mafia like in the U.S. Also Canada, as a British ex-colony, had the U.K's NHS as a model, and politics here was still _very_ strongly influenced by U.K. politics, where the Labour party was very strong.

I'm not sure what the path to U.S. single payer would be, but it would be very difficult one.