How Canada got universal health care and what the U.S. could learn

Naresh Tinani loves his job as a perfusionist at a hospital in Saskatchewan’s capital. To him, monitoring patient blood levels, heart beat and body temperature during cardiac surgeries and intensive care is a “privilege” — “the ultimate interaction between human physiology and the mechanics of engineering.”

But Tinani has also been on the other side of the system, like when his now-15-year-old twin daughters were born 10 weeks early and battled infection on life support, or as his 78-year-old mother waits months for new knees amid the coronavirus pandemic. While...