This Canadian patient was told he must wait 12-18 months for spinal surgery, at the risk of developing paralysis. (Via @DaveSolsberg.)
Maybe he'll find another doctor who can help him "work the system" and get the surgery sooner. Or maybe not. Stuart Browning once noted that some Canadian doctors have been pressured by hospital administrators not to perform too many surgeries -- at the risk of losing some of their already-limited operating room time. (Unfortunately, the original link is now off-line.)
Fortunately, the US is not yet in such dire straits. Yet.
The blog of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
