Yes, the reason we are sliding slowly into the American mercenary system. It robs talent and denies equal access to non-rich. It should be criminal.

It’s a blight but with a huge fan club.

There is one or two Private Clinics in Saskatchewan; you pay $100 or something like that for a script refill then something like that for a doctors note as well. Then there is some expensive bill you pay to see a NP, or some other naturopathic professional. Not nocking NP’s they are as capable as other professionals in the field. I am not going to knock the naturopathic professionals for the field they are in either but it those clinics are a scam.

There’s some level of privatized healthcare in all provinces, even if it’s just for esthetic stuff… But in Quebec the private system is pretty well implemented and the government is (surprisingly for that party) trying to reverse the movement. In a year we have more doctors leaving the public sector than the total number of the private doctors in Ontario…

I can’t speak for all provinces but the three I’ve lived in all had smaller private clinics for specialists, imaging, specific fields of medicine and so on that are established parts of the public healthcare system. In these cases, the government effectively works as the insurer on behalf of patients, but many of these clinics also offer services which are not covered. The Canadian Medical Association provides a more thorough explanation of this here.