I agree with Malkynn's summary of life under our medical system. It's worth noting that there can be vast differences between provinces. I am in BC, where we do have a pharmacare program, such as it is, to protect against catastrophic prescription coverage. There are also strong discounts/subsidies for seniors.
Personally, I think the best thing about our system is that if you are reasonably healthy, and an issue comes up, you just go to the doctor. No thoughts about costs or barriers. Think you might have the flu or an infection? Might be pregnant or are experiencing unusual pain? Head to the local walk-in clinic, find out when the drop-in hours are not too busy, see a doctor, done. So routine care is straightforward and catastrophic care is straightforward. Got chest pains? Broke a leg? In a car accident? Head to emergency where you will be treated promptly with excellent care and no bills will be sent to you.
There are headaches and issues with all the stuff in between. All of our care is funneled through our family doctors (they do all the referrals to specialists; can't just call up a specialist and make an appointment), and in some places finding a family doctor accepting new patients can be very difficult (although this seems to be improving? There have been lots of moves to bring in doctors from other countries, graduate more doctors, incentivize work in rural areas, etc). Moving through specialists for non-emergency issues can take forever. Wait on a list for one specialist for months, then they order tests (CT, MRI, whatever), wait for those, they want to send you to another specialist, back on a list for months more, etc. Knee or hip replacement? Get on the list. Need your mom in assisted living? Get on the list. The lengths of these lists is highly location-dependent. If you have chronic pain, these waits can be incredibly unpleasant. No charges for any of this stuff.
Provincial plans do not usually cover dental care, counseling (although hospital psychiatric and some other critical mental health care will be, but very narrowly) or much other mental health care, vision care, etc. Some provinces cover a bit of alternative practice--there is some massage therapy coverage here, for instance. This varies widely.
Most people have some "extended" health insurance benefits through their employer, and this can be purchased privately as well, usually for a couple of hundred dollars and up a month, depending on number of people and level of benefits. These plans cover dental, vision, sometimes counseling and a variety of preventative and/or therapeutic services like physio, chiro, naturopathy, etc. as well as things like private hospital beds, subsidized prescriptions and the like. We also tend to buy private sector insurance for travel insurance for when we leave the province or country for an extended period of time. These insurers generally bridge the gap to get patients back to Canada to keep the costs down. :)
Hope that helps!