As cwan points out, access to a waiting list is not access to health care.<p>When you ignore easily gamed statistics like life expectancy and look at things like cancer survival rates, you see that we seem to be getting something for the extra money we're spending.  And we're a rich nation, it would hardly be odd for us to choose to spend a lot there.<p>And for now, there are choices.  At times I've had minimal health insurance, e.g. catastrophic illness or injury was covered but not my occasional sinus infection.