Earlier in 2026 the pain in her right ovary became so severe she could not walk, laugh, talk, or work. She described lying in bed “crying and dying every single day.” Doctors found an endometrioma roughly the size of a grapefruit. In the public system she was told she could face a wait of up to 21 months for surgery. She researched clinics in Mexico, Turkey, and Romania, chose Romania, and paid roughly $12,000 in medical costs plus travel and lodging for a total near $20,000. She has called it the best decision of her life. Her pain had often been dismissed or treated as normal by Canadian providers, and she now shares her experience on social media.
“I couldn't walk, couldn't laugh, couldn't talk, couldn't work.”
Endometriosis affects an estimated 1 in 10 women (around 2 million people in Canada). Diagnosis is frequently delayed — averaging about 5.4 years according to advocates, with some waiting decades — and surgical waits can stretch many months to years. Symptoms are often nonspecific and there is no single simple diagnostic test. Dr. Christopher Labos noted that the system has historically been poor at treating pain, especially women's pain, with delays at every stage from imaging to booking surgery. Advocate Katie Luciani of Endometriosis Network Canada has pointed to the same long delays and called for better national action. Labos also cautioned that surgery abroad carries risks depending on the country's standards, while noting that Canada's system is strong once patients can access it. Similar stories of Canadian women traveling to Mexico or the U.S. for endometriosis care appear regularly for the same reason.
This is the practical result of a tax-funded public system that covers the procedure and charges nothing at the point of use. Coverage existed on paper. When the queue left her unable to function, she paid again — out of pocket — to get the surgery on a timeline she judged workable. The public option rationed by waiting list; the paid option abroad delivered faster care. That pattern is what shows up when “free healthcare” meets limited capacity of specialists and operating rooms: patients who can afford it still pay a second time to escape the delay.
Democrats and left-leaning advocates in the United States who promote single-payer or heavily expanded public models usually lead with the promise of free coverage at the point of use and universal access. The Montreal case is a documented example of how those systems handle capacity shortfalls in practice — by making people wait, sometimes for more than a year, while their condition worsens. It is the concrete outcome people can see when the emphasis stays on removing the direct price without solving the underlying supply constraints. The story itself supplies the comparison.
Petrec's case is the purest example of the argument now running in the United States. Democrats and left-leaning advocates who push single-payer or heavily expanded public models — Abdul El-Sayed, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders — lead with the promise of free coverage at the point of use and universal access for everyone. Canada already runs a version of that promise: care that is free when you walk in. What it delivered Petrec was a wait of up to 21 months while she was, in her own words, crying and dying every single day.
The system that saved her was the one she paid for. That is the capitalist system's answer, and it is fine: it gives people the opportunity. If you can afford it, you get treated — so everyone works hard so they can afford it. Her story is just an example, pure as it is.
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