Once a government bureaucracy has been set up to do any job whatever, it will find endless excuses for expanding, prolonging, or perpetuating that job.
The median waiting time for patients in Canada from referral by a practitioner, to consultation with a specialist, to date of treatment, was 21.2 weeks in 2017.
Noah Smith has written yet another "popular" column challenging established economics assumptions. But he's really only appealing to his reader's established biases.