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I also live under single payer healthcare, and I have experience with a much lower stakes "hail mary" type event.
A number of years ago, I developed a growth on my eyelid that no one was sure what it was.
We started with the optometrist, who thought it was a duct blocked by dirt and suggested a medicated cleaning regimen where they assumed it occurred. This didn't help.
So I got recommended up the scale to my GP, who took one look at it and said, "Yeah, that ain't right. Here's a recommendation to an eye specialist at the hospital." which took ~1 month to get an appointment.
A month later, I have my first appointment with the eye specialist, who isn't quite sure what it is but knows that it's an internal problem and not a blocked duct. After the third appointment (3 months after the first) she says that she's narrowed it down to either a benign tumour or a blood clot, but isn't confident in her eyelid surgery capabilities and recommends me to an eyelid specialist in a neighbouring province.
6 months after the first optometrist appointment, I have my first appointment with the specialist who identifies it during the appointment as an internal scab that will decompose itself, but the wound isn't healing. He says that surgery is an option, but there's a chance I go blind and a smaller chance that I straight up die. He tells me that I'll come back in 3 months because it's not life threatening, and if it starts getting much worse, we'll discuss removing it.
After an appointment with him every 3 months for almost 2 years, it finally cleared up.
The issue itself was relatively low risk, but it wasn't until 6 months in that it was deemed "not cancer." At every step, the risk was evaluated, and 'hail mary' options were discussed. But they were always discussed as "if it gets worse, we can do this, and the decision is yours". So (at least where I live) there are hail mary options and you can take them, but only if the risk to your health is significant enough that the rewards outweigh the risk.
I was expecting this to be a story of an issue, but this is actually really encouraging for what single payer could look like. The time scale isn't great, but it's pretty comparable to what I've experienced and heard about from friends here in the "efficient" private US system.
Part of the time scale was how low risk the issue ended up being. We knew from the first few months that even if it was a tumor, so there was no "rush" to get me in to see people.
One of the 'mindsets' of single payer is that more severe/risky issues can get fast tracked over less severe/risky ones. Ultimately, all that was happening to me was that my vision was slightly affected (because my eyelid wouldn't open fully). But had it been a tumour, I likely would have been on the surgeons table within a month of them finding out.
If it means anything, my parents have been going to a lot of specialists lately as they age and have had issues, and it's pretty much the same story: