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I’m no expert on the US healthcare system, but I bet the vast majority can't afford the kind of care your father-in-law got. In Canada, just like in Portugal, things move way slower if you don't have insurance and use the public system, but you still get treated—even if sometimes it’s too late. But I think that’s the exception, not the rule.
I will say this. When I told my wife's family in the US how long we had to wait for a family doctor, what the wait time to see specialists and to get specialized testing done they were utterly shocked.
I don't take these types of studies very seriously because they are usually politically motivated. I am sure there are many issues with the US system with soaring costs and unaffordability being chief among them but I have seen first hand the cost of perpetually underfunded, strained socialized medicine. Both my wife and mother waited over a year for necessary major surgeries, meanwhile in the US my father in law was having heart issues and within a week he had seen a cardiologist, undergone all necessary tests and was on an operating table having a pacemaker put in. Unless you were dying and need emergency surgery that would have taken minimum 6 months in Canada.