Wait times and my family doctor

I live in a community that is about an hour away from Toronto (sort of, with the rest of my time spent in Asia or the US). At the insistence of the parental units, I'm going to make an appointment for a checkup with my family doctor (they're concerned about the 1-2 eggs I eat). I was told it will be a half a year wait.

I couldn't help but laugh (and being a guy and having no health issues at the moment and quite close to reaching my workout goals, it is somewhat unimportant to me anyway). Basically in my community, there is a shortage of family physicians so quite a few of my friends who have moved into the area don't even have one and need to use an urgent care clinic for their basic medical needs. At my doctor's office, I've learned that it takes about a week if you need to see her on a specific non-urgent issue and up to a few days where they would double book for a more urgent issue.

Further, if I were to decide I couldn't wait and go to an urgent care clinic, the government (this being a one payer system) would penalize my doctor for my doing so. Ah, fun times and government run healthcare... I have been saving up for a mega rant on healthcare... we'll see if I end up having time to do the round up this week.