Tommy Douglas: Back Door User Fees

just the tip of the iceberg folks......my wife is a RN, and the majority of her co-workers are coming up to retirement age....until our health care system starts treating the services they provide as a commercial product, with all the advantages that a free market brings, this is going to be a problem nation-wide....my wife is solicited weekly with job offers from all around the world(and so are her co-workers)....yet, she is treated like dirt at the hospital she works at....funny paradigm we have here...her services are sorely needed, yet they are not even on chimpy mcretards radar(oh ya, i know iberia, mcarsehole promised more nurses, but it is NOT happening).....the socialized health care crew have failed, and it is time to aknowledge the fact....we need an open market health care environment, where the doctors and nurses are accorded the same respect they receive in the US

If health care is in crisis who's fault is that? I mean there is only one way to point a finger in a state run public system...they sure as hell are not losing patients to private care and if they were that would be so much the better for the public system as the docs are paid regardless of use and and the evacuating customers would free up wait times.....

....soooo what's really the problem? Lack of funding in the system? Who's fault is that but the managers? Lack of staff? Who's fault is that but the manager/employer?

So I see in dipper land when a public system fouls up due to mismanagement by thise who run it it becomes OUR problem...typical dipper thinking.

Got a hole in your head? One-tier health care at work in Ontario:
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/216280

"David Malleau awoke in hospital with a gaping hole in his skull.

The 44-year-old Hamilton truck driver had suffered a devastating car accident in 2004 that forced doctors at Hamilton General Hospital to remove a fist-sized piece of bone from his skull to relieve pressure on his brain.

Once the swelling subsided and he was ready for surgery in March 2005, Malleau was sent home and placed on a waiting list.

Three months passed. Then six. He waited at home, a prisoner unable to leave the house for fear something would hit the exposed side of his brain – for him a potentially fatal incident. In the end, it took nearly a year before he could get skull replacement surgery..."

Mark
Ottawa

Well, in my opinion respect is earned. As in all professions, there are those who have earned respect, and those who should not even be there.
Id be willing to bet, kingstonlad, that your wife knows a few nurses who should not be in the profession. I do not blame a morale problem on the Government (federal or provincial), i blame it on Hospital Administration, And the many Health Care bureaucracies.
Strange thing, though. I read an article not long ago, saying that out here in B.C. the graduating class of nurses will have a tough time finding a job.

Never mind rural areas, they are having trouble getting nurses in Hamilton. Face it, nursing is a crappy job, doesn't pay enough, and burns people out in ten years. Its a one way ticket to a back injury and a Prozac prescription for a hell of a lot of women.

Major reason for this is low staffing levels, they just hire the deadly bare minimum and work 'em till they break.

Kingstonlad: Interesting insight into the RN shortage. I also have seen big US hospitals blow into Calgary and rent the Radisson for a "job fair" and scoop RNs before they graduate with marvelous wages and job benefits for half the hours a Canukistani RN has to put in in this broken system.

I find it genuinely dystopian that the asshats in Ottawa who have defunded health care as much as 40%...and who now put temporary patches on a broken system, have billions to spend on fraudulent GHG science and carbon economics but not a penny for the only public system Canadians rely on and access most of their lives.

Sorry I have to shout so "progressive" Steve and the moonbat opposition can hear clearly:

IT ISN'T ABOUT CARBON CREDITS....IT'S OUR HEALTH CARE STUPID!!!

Lee, graduating nurses may have a hard time finding jobs... in Vancouver. Drive half an hour, problem solved.

Phantom, nurses are needed in Vancouver as well as the ROC. Its not that theres no room for them, its that the health care system wont hire them. As long as we have rationed health care, i guess that will be the case.

"asshats in Ottawa who have defunded health care as much as 40%"

Therein lies the problem, the blame game. My understanding is that health care is a provincial responsibilty. As long as different levels of government cannot sort this basic issue out how can the system be improved?

My wife's a nurse, in BC, and could work 24/7 if she had the energy. The problem, as said above, is local boards are not hiring, and there is a scramble every day to find personnel to fill in for vacancies.

The bureaucracy, as is always the case in government funded services, eats up a large percentage of the budget, on featherbed type administrative positions.

Our local health board pays a "communications specialist" a six figure income, for what, we haven't figured out.

Laundry is shipped 60 miles, and back, and meals are shipped in the same distance, then reheated.

The food is bloody awful, the wards are so crowded patients fill the hallways, and are put in broom closets, when there's room. Nurses are taking early retirement, burnt out on the stress of the job.

But mention allowing private HC providers, and everyone disagrees most vehemently, "can't have an American style system in Canada"! Might be too efficient.

walk in any hospital and observe the plethora of staff at the desk at the top of the ward, busily entering data and filling out forms. the wards are unattended to for most of the time and the files are utmost.

they have become bloated beaurcracies as hospitals are not health care systems as much as an extension of the government.

As someone who worked in health care for 30 years I saw this shortage in nursing happening. This was caused by a phenomena called credential creep. 25 years ago the majority of RNs came from 2 year technical school programs. They wrote and passed the same exams as the University Grads.

The nursing coming out of the 2 year programs were well trained and there was an abundant supply . The training they took was focused solely on NURSING. They spent 2 years learning to be nurses and did not have to fill 4-5 years with assorted unrelated arts courses. The tuition cost to the trainee was much more reasonable as technical schools are much lower cost to run than universities. They are not staffed by high priced PHDs who are there to do research not teach .

Another huge cost was to the taxpayer. The student only pays about 1/3 of the cost of the training. 2/3 comes from the taxpayer.

The difference in cost between the 2 year and 4 year program is a minimum $150,000.00 if you consider lost wages.

Another big problem with the now compulsory degree program is that they are excluding individuals who are practical in nature. Many individuals are unwilling or unable to spend 4-5 years in school with no income.

For the most part nursing is a practical hands on type of profession. Individuals who are not practical and hands on will not be happy as a nurse.

I watched all this happen and as a wet behind the ears 26 year old I predicted a massive shortage in nursing to anyone who would listen(this included a lot of nurses who all thought I was nuts). This was 25 years ago.

In my opinion individuals in the higher echelons of the nursing profession pushed these changes through to elevate the profession in stature and compensation. They did not think it through very carefully .

The situation we have now are:

1. Countrywide shortages of registered nurses leading to an unhappy ,stressed out worker force.

2. Increased costs in money and time to the trainee.

3. Increased costs to the taxpayers for the training.

4. Exclusions of many practical individuals who would love to nurse who are unwilling or unable to sacrifice an additional 2-3 years of their lives .

5. These changes all happened for no apparent reason and without a proper plan to deal with the consequences of these actions.

6. This situation will only get worse when all the practical hands on 2 year Grads retire.

I think the POWERS THAT BE realized their mistake but the genie was out of the bottle and now we have this huge mess on our hands with no easy fix. I still can't figure out why they couldn't see the writing on the wall 25 years ago .

When 75-80% of your workforce is coming from two year technical school and college programs and you eliminate this sector and you are expecting a taxpayer funded university system that is chronically short of money to pick up the slack the outcome is an unmitigated disaster.

I'm no rocket scientist and I predicted this situation almost to a T.

Why couldn't all these high priced decision makers see the inevitable outcome of these changes? Maybe they did and they just didn't care.

Paul said: " My understanding is that health care is a provincial responsibilty. "

Therein lies the problem. No offence Paul, but Canadians need to smarten up and reserch Canada's health care system more closely so thay can detect the culpret at fault.

First off when Tommy Douglass was campaigning for this marvelous universal health system, we had a constitution ( and still do) which stated that hospitals were the EXCLUSIVE responsibility of the provinces...OK Lester bought that ...he also bought his way into provincial jurisdiction by spliting the funding for universal health care 50/50 with the provinces...the provinces were still responsible for "delivery of services" but the feds subsidized costs 50%.

We recall the great glee with which finace minister (Dithers) Martin announced that federal budget was "balanced:. Well it was "balanced" by defunding Ottawa's commitment to universal health care...Ottawa;s 50% burden of cost shrank to as low as 10% in some transfers.

Where do the provinces make up the 40% they have been robbed of?

I note that Harper sits on surpluses while the system is still in peril from Ottawa defunding.

Not a doubt in my mind that if Ottawa re established the original responsibility of 50% funding, we would have workable health care.

But you can't do that when you allocate billions to the theory that an odorless inert gas we all exhale is destroying life on earth ...now can you?

Lee, I guess we are both saying the same thing. If there is a job shortage its a false one generated by improper hiring. Improper hiring is due to bad management.

Bottom line, single payer healthcare is a colossal failure. You can't fix it by increasing spending from the top, because its a bureaucracy. It will expand to absorb any amount of money and still not have enough at the front line to hire staff.

Private businesses can't do that because they have to show a profit, and they have to compete. Take any Canadian hospital private and they'd immediately fire 2/3rds or more of their paper pushers and hire staff with the money. They'd have to, because office workers outnumber patient care workers in most hospitals around here.

So you would like to privatize health care so you can pay $500-$1000 a month to an insurance company who may or may not cover whatever care you need depending on their bottom line?

I have a rope I'd like to sell you.

"And before you jump in about declining rural populations, this is not one of those cases. In addition to a stable mixed cattle/grain agricultural base, the town is located in the booming southeast oil patch, with all the accident risks - and tax revenues - that accompany that industry."

Ditto the Consort area here in Alberta. Our population is going up and the town of Consort is frantically rezoning land to make space for new businesses and residences. That hasn't stopped the local health authorities from trying to remove even more services from our local hospital.

The latest ploy was to try and shut down the laundry at our hospital and truck everything a 500 km round trip to Drumheller for laundering. I fail to see how this is cost effective when fuel is well over a buck a litre right now. Fortunately they backed off when the locals caught wind of the decision.

The city dwellers want the energy and food we produce, but we're automatically labeled a bunch of greedy bastards when we ask for basics like accessible schools for our kids and 24 hour emergency medical services.

The knee jerk response is sign-up bonuses. The long-term response is so many people in nursing and medical training programs that there is no shortage of trained people. Short term thinking closed off a lot of the training and short-term thinking isn't going to solve the long-term problems that decision created. As well as any bail-the-boat tactics they use to survive, regional health districts could sponsor students with a proviso they return or payback the support.

Several years ago the daughter of a friend in Regina applied to nursing school in SK. They told her that she would be on a waiting list for an indefinite time period. She applied in North Dakota and they accepted her right away, plus helped her find housing and a part time (nursing related) job. Now that she has graduated do you think she is ever coming back?

"So you would like to privatize health care so you can pay $500-$1000 a month to an insurance company who may or may not cover whatever care you need depending on their bottom line?"

Will private health insurance be allowed to deny insurance to those who are high risk? I ask because my heart condition precludes me from getting life insurance. Will I suddenly find myself without affordable health care?

DThomas,

Why stop at at $1000 per month. I say it'll probably be $10,000 a month, nurses will get their credentials from a cereal box and doctor's will start timing their surgeries to coincide with their tee times.

Worse yet, managers will hire people at less than minimum wage, bust all the unions, and allow the smoking of their fat cigars in their offices.

People will roam the streets with leprosy and rickets. Mental patients will be put on reality shows where they battle each other to the death for Prozac, whilst the rich eat caviar and drink champagne from the skulls of migrant workers, whose relatives sell every second relative for money that can be made by selling their organs...

Yes, the privitization of our healthcare will be exactly like that, or even worse...

LOL... thanks Mike.

Just another day in Lorne Calvert's Zero Tier Health Care System.

My mother was a nurse, worked Alta, Sask, and B.C. plus taught in Alta.. Well qualified like many, packed it in when the process started off the cliff. Long and short, efficient management (small, accountable, effective) was, in the name of efficiency, substituted by large bean counting "teams". Remember "Chief of staff (singular)", "Administrator (singular)", Director of Nursing (singular)", Patient Services. A flat adminstration structure, in touch and effective, plus most of them actually put in shifts on the floor. Today??

Now we have reams of administration, most with no floor experience, sitting in the "local offices" (many of which used to be for patient services), plus Health Region offices (nice, never big enough, need more space, more bodies, more $$), and lets not forget the Department of Health (same model as the Health Region scene). SO, from Department of Health and flat local management we now have??

Long and short, the Lib/Dip model is: have as much cushion between you and the front line as possible. Saves answering the hard questions. That way the a Government Department (federal or prov) can say: "its their responsibility, check with them", they then say: "whoa now, its thier problem, or its under study, etc", the Region says: "its a monetary issue, we need more", the local group says: "its mandated, planned, handled by the region, talk to them". The merry go round of: "someone else". The employees of these levels are of course not "inclined" to vote in any particular manner or for any particular party, you think? Their managers would certainly never mention negatives about change would they??

Of course here in Saskatchewan, if you don't live in Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw or PA, you are persona non grata. After all, no-one lives out there do they? The resources revenues just magically appear, no-one out there contributes do they, no risks involved are there?, etc. Roads, aw come on, they're not that bad are they?

But, if you have a social issue, union concern, represent a disadvantaged group (percieved or real), you can likely get some funding and attention.

Although it should be, its not about efficient front line delivery of service. It is about the "appearance" of concern, it is about ensuring you have the maximun number of employees beholding to you, it is not about patient care, it is about rationing, it is about making sure envy and dissent are fostered, small communities are pitted against each other (if scrapping between themselves no heat on the Regina crowd), it is not about efficiencies (the pennies that make it to the front line are paper thin from all the handling they have prior to trickling down), it is not about hiring and treating "front line" staff well, it is about "expendable" constant calling for short shifts at varied hours.

Cut out the middle level of admin, use the money to adequately staff the front line, treat them well and with respect, have local admin, oversee and budget appropriately from the Provincial level, use the money well and set some delivery goals (care/surgery/etc). Right now its a money pit, with the cash chewed up long before it reaches the patient care level.

Commie/Socialist/Lib mantra: weaken the strong to strengthen the weak. It didn't work in Russia, it hasn't and won't work here. Kick the Dips out and make sure the Lib crowd stays out of Ottawa.

Its our only hope.

France has the best medical system in the world. I wonder if we should perhaps look to their system for answers instead of the states which:

(CNN) -- An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

Pro life - Yeah right.

The problems with Canada's health care are systemic. There are no magic bullets or quick fix. The Fraser Institute has determined that increased funding has little effect on indicators of improved service (wait times). Throwing more money at the system is largely eaten up in bureaucracy and rotten attitude.

Thanks to the frustration of nurses within such a system, their major outlet for action is through their unions. In your average nursing station much time is spent either fighting the last or next provincial election and always the management.

The solution lies in changing the mindset of Canadians so that universal health care insurance is and should be a separate concept than public (provincial) monopoly delivery of service. I would suggest that public hospitals should be run by no higher level of government than municipal or county. One size does not fit all. The monopoly on public delivery should be thrown out allowing a market to function.

My wife was a nurse who, after practising in the US came to Canada where, in addition to seeing patients die that would have survived in US (public and private) hospitals, she had to endure 12 hour shifts along with all BC nurses (self-inflicted through their union). For that reason alone she hasn't nursed in over 20 years. No flexibility.

We now live in the US where I enjoy the costs and benefits of a mixed system of health care insurance and delivery. I won't dwell on details so as not to arouse the the Canadian pathology regarding US-style health care. Ignorance is bliss.

The health care system need a complete overhaul and not just Romino's add more (taxpayer's)money. Fact: my daughter is having trouble finding an opening in any Canadian nursing school. Fact: my brother's girlfriend is a Sask nurse. works regular shifts and takes up all sorts of extra time (because she has seniority). Result is she can spend three or four months in her condo down in Belize. gotta love nurses unions.

Sean is crying into the wind about $500 - $1000 insurance. Take a look at Australia that has a dual system. nobody goes without. Please go and see it for yourself and talk to the people working in that system.

DThomas, does it hurt when the wind whistles between your ears?

"Sean is crying into the wind about $500 - $1000 insurance."

Are you paying attention? I'm willing to pay for health insurance if I'm allowed to have it. If the same companies that are refusing people life insurance get into the business of refusing people health insurance as well...

Sorry, but while private enterprise is a great answer for most problems, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Why wouldnt the local town provide things like a leased car, free golf memberships, and other perks to retain these guys? It's not the governments fault they leave.

DThomas, the "poor" US infant mortality rate has been long debunked. It's due to classifying tiny preemies as a live birth and trying to save them, but many don't make it. Other countries would classify these children as stillbirths if they died. It's also due to heroic efforts (i.e., in utero surgeries) to get children to be born alive. Again, in a lot of 'high-risk' cases the children die, but in places with poorer healthcare, they would usually be miscarried.

Sean, pay attention. I said look at Australia for an example of a working public/private healthcare system. The Canadian method of not allowing anyone to purchase private insurance is a step backward no matter how you swing it. Canadians can design a robotic arm that can thread the proverbial needle from 50 meters up in space but ask Canadians to rethink health care and we get the "sky is falling" and other scare rhetoric. I dare say we have more MRIs in the hospital I work for down here than most provinces have. And probably better utilized too.

"Sean, pay attention. I said look at Australia for an example of a working public/private healthcare system."

Would be nice if we could have that here. However, given how quickly politicians of all parties are compromised once they get into power, (and any Conservatives who think otherwise should look at the money Harper is throwing at the Global Warming sh*tburger right now), I remain far from hopeful that they will do the right thing.

France has the best medical system in the world.

French government hasn't been able to balance its budget in years, has no chance of balancing its budget anytime soon, is facing demographic implosion due to the reticence of its citizens to breed-up a new crop of taxpayers to sustain the government pyramid scheme, and the replacement taxpayers brought in from the third world burn a couple of hundred cars every week because the heavily taxed and regulated socialist economy won't allow them to find jobs or start businesses. What a great system. It'll all explode in a civil war in a decade or two, or else French civilization will just whither away and the cities will be depopulated like at the end of Bastiat's Parable of the Three Aldermen.

THE FATHER: ... Paris is becoming a bare field ... And it took just three misguided aldermen, helped by public ignorance, to bring this frightful calamity upon us.

THE SON: Tell me its history, Father.

THE FATHER: It is really quite simple. Under the pretext of establishing three new branches of industry in Paris and of thereby increasing job opportunities for the working classes, these men had the importation of wood, butter, and meat prohibited. They arrogated to themselves the right to provide their fellow citizens with these commodities. First, their prices rose to exorbitant heights. No one was earning enough to afford them, and the small number of those who could obtain some, by spending all their earnings on them, were no longer able to buy anything else. This at once spelled the doom of all the industries in Paris, and the end came all the more quickly as the provinces no longer provided our city with a market for its products. Poverty, death, and emigration began to depopulate Paris.

THE SON: And when is this going to stop?

THE FATHER: When Paris has become a forest and a prairie.

THE SON: The three aldermen must have made a great deal of money.

The time has come to get back to basics. Everyone must pay premiums, like in the 60's. Then health care would no longer free. Next, turn the hospitals back over to the private sector and to the nuns, like in the 60's. This gets them out of the politician’s hands and the unions' control and we can start to control costs.

Next we have to get rid of the public only mentality that has rotted the system. Only then can initiatives and new ideas be brought back into this insane and grossly expensive system.

Sean has a legitimate concern. In the USA some states have mandated insurance shall be available regardless of medical condition, some have not. However in -all- states there is Medicare, which covers for everybody. And you can always move, right?

People whine and moan about the free county hospitals being crappy. Compared to the private ones, they are. Compared to Canada, they are pretty average in terms of wait times and services. Maybe a little better.

Nobody goes without unless they can't be bothered to stand in line. Efforts by the DemocRats to find some poor victim raped by The System have so far come up empty, and you just know they turned over every rock looking.

The most knowing and sensible comments here are from those who know what it is like on the 'inside' I must remain anon because I am on the inside too. Throwing more money at the 'system'(as WLM suggested) will not solve any problems. If privatization includes 'balancing the books' like a private company, I'd be all for it. Administration hires administration and nurse's are run off there feet, short staffed. BTW do you think a 4year university grad really wants to dump poop out of a bedpan??There will be a serious shortage of hands-on nurses soon.
lakeshore observer made some good points.
Another area that 'cannot be discussed' do to privacy issue is the abuse of the system at the ER desk. We have what we call 'frequent flyers' who take up funding with expensive tests, dr. and nurse time for the same vague complaints.
Fear of litigation motivates the staff to cover all the bases.Do you think they would stop in so frequently if they had to slap a $20. on the desk?