If reform of our collapsing Medicare system is just going to consist of contracting out a few services to private clinics, but otherwise continuing the prohibition on direct payments between consumers and health care providers, that’s not actually reform.
The bottom line is that all healthcare will still be provided to Canadians. They will not have to pay out of pocket.
What reform in Canada will mean though is allowing more practitioners and clinics to provide more services to Canadians. We need options that will reduce wait times.
The government has control over health care, and will never give it up.
Once again, you see the bogey man of US style health care and people going “bankrupt” over medical bill, to justify single third-party-payer health insurance in Canada.
None of the political class is willing to stand up and say “health insurance is not health care” and we need to revisit the whole system from top to bottom.
My wife and I live in Mexico which has a mix of private and public care. We don’t have health insurance due to the cost (US style rates) and opted to self-insure. My wife recently had a mini-stroke and was ultimately diagnosed with diabetes after numerous visits to the doctor and specialists. She had a CT scan at a very modern local hospital, booked the same day, for $120. She saw a neurologist in Guadalajara for about $100. She needed an MRI and doppler ultrasound which were booked 2 days hence at a total cost of about $350. She had an ECG with a heart specialist at a local clinic on a Saturday and saw an endocrinologist, also on a Saturday. The extensive blood tests which diagnosed the diabetes cost about $160. This was all scheduled and conducted within a 3 week period and cost less than $700 total. (I’m told one can wait a year or more in Canada just for the MRI.) We booked the appointments with the specialists directly and got comparative quotes, sometimes saving more than 50%. Competition is truly a great equalizer!
Your wife would have died waiting for those tests here. No cost though!
Here you might die waiting for treatment but at least it’s free!
No such thing as free health care in Canada for people who pay taxes.
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If you’re in a 40 percent tax bracket… how free is it, really?
PS… haven’t had a family doctor since 2014.
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Bloody expensive.
I’d be ok with the crap healthcare if we could pay for good care but that’s illegal.
When the incentive in the system is to view the patient as a COST and not as an opportunity to make a profit, then the patient will be treated the same as all other costs are.
Like waste disposal. You spend the bare minimum on waste disposal, and you don’t care what happens to it after it is out the door.
That is the Canadian healthcare model. Same as the garbage man.
If everyone would be so kind to help this pole on this very question
https://www.iheartradio.ca/am800/news-poll
Question: “Should more private healthcare services be allowed in Ontario to address staff shortages and delays in care?” Results when so did the pole at 8:50 p.m. Central were 51% yes, 49% no. I’m amazed that only 51% said yes. How the hell do almost half of Ontarians think the broken system will get fixed? Or don’t they think it’s broken?
(I now know two Ontarians who died of colon cancer, in my view because of long waits to get treatment.)
Had a heart attack about 6 years ago.
My cardiologist makes sure his receptionist calls me before my next phone call appointment.
He even made me a Case study because i was so handsome.
The first part of the last sentence is true,the rest is conjecture.
Funny how for-profit, free-standing abortion clinics are okay though.
In Saskatchewan during the Covid plandemic infant genocide, (i.e. abortion) was an essential service. The irony.
The future of Canadian healthcare is euthanasia. Get it while there’s no waitlist comrades.
I’m sure they’ll find it in their black little hearts to home-deliver that service.
And a portable crematorium.
Oops, maybe I am giving them ideas……
Our cat gets faster treatment than we do. Took spouse three weeks to get an appointment for blood work, etc., and almost a month to get a necessary ultrasound. Meanwhile, should our feline (who, I must mention, is so ungrateful for the vet’s attentions that she has to be sedated before anyone will even look at her – and they will do so only wearing welders’ gloves) will get blood taken during the consult which will be sent away that day and back the next. Ultrasound? – there are a couple of specialist providers who will come in to the clinic with equipment, and my information is that it’s only a day or so to wait for an appointment.
The problems with our health care are not new; remember back in the day when the headlines in the papers were about “bed blockers”; seniors who couldn’t return to their own homes and for whom no alternative was available.
Mum’s been gone rising 15 years, and do remember the frustration we had with the health system during her latter years, especially an encounter with a “stroke” specialist doctor who absolutely lost it and harangued me at length because I dared point out that – given I had visited Mum before going to work – I was not available to take her home instantly as he demanded and would like her discharge delayed for a couple of hours until could pull offsprings in to help. He was practically spitting with rage; I pitied his co-workers. I succumbed, phoned work to say I would be delayed, and called spouse to leave work and help as logistics meant I couldn’t leave Mum alone in the hospital lobby while I went and got the car. Spouse promptly cancelled a meeting involving at least one other company to come to my rescue. So we’re at the hospital, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait. Finally, I walk up to the witch-spelled-with-a-b who is managing the ward to ask what is going on. Get the “okay take her’ and then, when ask if there was a problem with medication, get an offhand and obviously ignorant response. So get Mum home and get to work late (I worked the 3 – 9 shift). A month later, took Mum in for a follow-up appointment, at which said w-s-w-a-b was gushing about how they reaaally cared about their patients. I bit my tongue.
Why did I not complain about the abusive doctor? Seems he was in charge of the stroke ward and I didn’t want to be on his radar should Mum have to return there.
As an aside, an offspring is a veterinarian; from the time said offspring graduated, Mum’s primary care doctor was a vet. It worked really well; should I visit Mum and have a concern, offspring would come in and check Granny out. Mum had the best of both worlds.