Canada’s health care system “can be described as a publicly-funded, privately-provided, universal, comprehensive, affordable, single-payer, provincially administered national health care system” (Bernard, 1992, p.103). Health care in Canada is provincial responsibility, with the Canada Health act being a federal legislation (Bernard, 1992, p. 102). Federal budget cuts, has caused various problems within Medicare such as increased waiting times and lack of new technology. Another problem with Medicare is that The Canada Heath Act does not cover expenditures for prescriptions drugs. All these issue has caused individuals to suggest making Medicare privatized. Although, Canada’s health care system consists of shortcomings, our universal
Yet despite these conferences, the promises were not fulfilled. The 2003 and 2004 agreements did not specify if the money was to be targeted toward particular needs (eg. training health personnel), innovations (eg. chronic disease management) or provided accountability to ensure that money was allocated towards these areas (Doctors of Medicare, 2009). Financial cuts by the federal government have resulted in many problems in the health care system such as long waiting lists and lack of new technology. In addition, the problem with The Health Canada Act is its failure to include prescription drugs. Lastly, the media gives the public the false notion that Medicare is in a ``crisis`` by exaggerating these issues. In addition, all these problems have caused individuals to suggest having Medicare privatized. The next section of this paper will look at these subjects in more detail.

Long waiting lists
One of the criticisms of Medicare is the “long waits to see a specialist, get diagnostic tests and undergo elective surgery” (CBC News Online, 2006). Patients have to wait several months for elective surgery and diagnostic procedures (Bernard, 1992, p. 105). One common explanation in justifying increased wait times is a growth in aging population increases demand for surgery (Priest, Rachlis, & Cohen,