I've talked to people waiting years for surgery to be done by specialists. There is a definite downside to "free" healthcare, which isn't really free just you pay for it in taxes whether you need it or not.

But that also doesn't mean our system ain't totally fucked. I would never celebrate having 3rd party insurance companies making billions off us as a better system.

As a real life example, docs wanted an MRI but that was $6g and the deductible was $6g so unless you have $6g sitting around you don't get the MRI and that's worse than waiting months for one. That's not better. That's paying for insurance you can't even use and that until recently you had to pay for.