Thank you for your comments.
I would argue that the number of people directly affected by waiting times--for hospital services, for physicians, for access to medicines--is in fact very small. The evidence is clear on that. So the general population, the bulk of the population, does not see in a direct way the failures of our health policy and the failures of our health care system. Because of that, there's not a lot of political momentum for change.
In fact, when you poll people on what they think of the health care system, they generally think it's pretty good. But then ask them how much they use the health care system: it's generally very little. So if you were to poll only those people who were very sick, I suspect they would have a very different opinion on how well the health care system is performing, including access to medicines.
That explains, I think, the lack of political momentum for change to make things better. It's not that we don't have high technology or advanced hospitals or well-trained physicians and nurses. Look, our medical staff can go anywhere in the world, and their skills translate very well. The problem is that our system is not allowing people timely access or appropriate access to an appropriate level of resources, and that's a function of its centrally planned design.