In my experience it isn't.

Relative has a non-life threatening issue that affects their quality of life. Didn't know what was causing it. Had booked an appointment in Canada. Wait time 5-6 months. Came with me along to Greece for the summer this year. Within 3 weeks, they saw 3 different specialists, and did tests (and received results) that would themselves require appointments and waiting times. Within 3 weeks they had a diagnosis, and had started treatment. Ironically, by the end of week 2, they got a call from the first appointment from back home, that an opening was available on week 3.

Total cost for all doctors and tests was about 400 EUR ~ 600 CAD, because they didn't have Greek social insurance and were paying fully private rates. That's about the same as visiting one of those specialists in the private system in Quebec, if you don't want to wait 5-6 months each time.

Greece > Quebec

I chalk it up to the fact that Greece has so many doctors, that they are actually supplying western european countries (UK, Germany) with doctors leaving for better wages. At the same time Canadian doctor boards act as if they need to do everything in their power to minimize the number of doctors graduating or getting their credentials recognized each year. I mean if they actually did try it, I don't see how they could do a better job at sucking. I know stories of people who came to Canada to work in tech with a doctor spouse and they left because the doctor spouse would have to basically spend 4-6 years sucking the dick of the Ontario Board of Physicians and Surgeons to get Italian credentials accepted.

It isn't always exaggerated but generally lacks context.

Some types of surgery can have long wait times if they are non life threatening but can drastically improve quality of life which is very very frustrating.

The thing they ignore though is that most people waiting could not afford the surgery at all in a private system. Most people in Canada live very close to the border and American health care is more than willing to take their money.

It isn't perfect and we should definitely be investing more in and trying to address problems but I don't see how things like American HMOs are anything more then rent seekers.

I’m jealous of more than two parties (while technically we do as well, in practice they are zero impact)

It's similar in Germany.

The CDU/CSU, our conservatives, huffed a bit too much of their own supply and had brilliant ideas like reducing the public deficit by reducing infrastructure spending to zero. When that somehow started costing them votes after bridges started to collapse they decided to lean wholesale into the culture war bullshit by "engaging" the hard-right AfD by copying their rhetoric wholesale. Oddly enough, all this does is legitimize the AfD and drive voters to them. Currently the chancellor is busy trying to find out how unpopular he can get before the government collapses, championing policies that would've instantly ended careers twenty years ago. (And yes, this includes cuts to the healthcare system and "cost-saving" measures that everyone agrees will drive up costs.)

The SPD, our social democrats, have essentially purged all of their social democrat members and are now a business-friendly rump party with no discernible character or platform. The Greens have softened their ecological policies to the point of pointlessness. The FDP, our libertarians, were always ready to harm the country to help the rich; the last time they were in office they were so blatant about it they destroyed the governing coalition and are now deeply despised.

The one traditional party that somehow moved in a positive direction was The Left, whose Russia fanboys tried to spin off into their own populist party, which then fizzled out. This, and the fact that they still somewhat care about what the label says, makes them the only ones who haven't fully enhsittified themselves.

Then there's the new boy on the block, the AfD. Positioning themselves as a moderate conservative worker's party, their actual policies only don't declare foreigners (and foreign-looking people) to be second-class humans because that spot is already reserved for Germans who aren't independently wealthy. Foreigners are somewhere below that. Due to an inexplicably effective social media presence and the general fecklessness of the established parties they're rising meteorically.

Notably, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution only hasn't designated the AfD as a known extremist organization because they immediately sued and the designation must be withheld until the suit is resolved. Several federal countries have designated them as threats to the democratic order. The CDU/CSU insists the can't possibly be banned, at first because they were too small, now because they're too big.

There are smaller parties that aren't yet self-serving empty husks but they generally don't have any chance of making it past the 5% hurdle because they don't have the weight of tradition or the equivalent of a billion Euro advertising budget behind them. I personally am somewhat partial towards the Humanists because they cite scientific papers for each of their policies. It's a nice break from the usual "our way is the only correct way because we say so". Too bad they'll probably never make it big.

If you intentionally break something while telling everyone it's broken, you are technically correct, but still an idiot.