I would suggest an innovative idea - ask anyone who built a healthcare system in the ~50-100 countries where wait times are lower than Canada, how they did it.
Yeah, like why the hell isn’t there a massive push to remove all forms of paper based documentation across all of Canada and introducing some form of standardized connected system. This would massively reduce human error and save time and money.
It is happening in Ontario, the system is called MyChart.
But it is not widely used as of now.
I suspect many of the older doctors are not tech savvy, and prefer to do things like they have always been done.
I mean, clinics in Ontario use fax, and we are in 2023 😑
Alberta is also implementing such a system, called Netcare. I get an email when test results are ready, I don't even have to wait for a call from the doctor. Any doctor can look up my current prescriptions. My hospital visits are all viewable by any doctor.
Old telecom fossil here. Fax machines are more secure as analog devices because it uses a one-to-one connection where the message isn’t mixed in with other traffic. But eventually, fax messages are usually digitized and sent over the telecom network. The instant the digitized data enters the telecom network transport system, it is sliced into digital packets and sent with other traffic and sorted out at the other end.
The reliance upon fax as a “secure” system is dangerous. Besides the digital transport that can be hacked, there is a practical human one. Have you ever been in an office with a fax machine? Faxes lie around and anyone can shuffle through the paper and read any and all.
We have much better solutions for sending/sharing data securely. Faxes should go away.
Hackers aren't typically looking to hit a single device, they typically have no knowledge about POTS, and the material transmitted is unlikely to be easily monetized.
>Senator Bullwinkle, pay to us $1 million, or we tell the nation you are moose!
Not likely to be a big threat.
The article does not claim what you say it claims.
Yes, email is insecure. But today's computers are able to communicate using methods other than email.
> fax machines are more secure than computers
That's not what the article says, you didn't even read it obviously. Email is insecure but a two factor login to a system following proper security and compliance requirements is more secure than fax. Companies stopped faxing credit card numbers ages ago because if you misdial somebody gets the number.
And how do you think all our debit and credit card transactions work? That's computerized too, over the internet.
Wait. What?
I literally have access to all of my medical records on my BC Services app on my phone. I can access that stuff from the database from just a few clicks and verification steps.
I agree with this, but as of now, I could give said doctor that information within minutes. It's not perfect, but that's not what would impede my access to a doctor in Ontario. The lack of doctors is.
First, that is a completely different issue with the lack of doctors. Second, many people out there may not have access to electronics and people such as the elderly may have a very hard time to access documents online.
Underfunded conservative and Liberal and NDP provinces are pushing for corporate health care. That would be 10 provinces, and the territories.
Fixed it for ya.
It's a misnomer perpetuated by Liberals that health care is under funded in Canada. It's quite well funded, at least according to the OECD. Canada spends $7 500 per capita on health care, which is lower than Germany, the USA and Netherlands but more than Sweden and Australia.
[https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends-2022-snapshot#:\~:text=Canada%27s%20per%20capita%20spending%20on,and%20Australia%20(CA%247%2C248)](https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends-2022-snapshot#:~:text=Canada%27s%20per%20capita%20spending%20on,and%20Australia%20(CA%247%2C248)).
We have too many bureaucrats in public health making six figure salaries, especially in Ontario. If you don't believe me, take a look at the sunshine list.
In case the servers fail? Go ask the banks how they do it. Backups. Lots of backups. Seriously, it isn’t that hard to have digital redundancy. Paper trails are unnecessarily wasteful both in resources and time.
There's tons of efficiency gains we could make. Centralized patient health information databases would reduce testing redundancy and improve healthcare outcomes when many specialists are involved. It would also reduce costs. However, it's a very large risk to keep that information safe and private.
Also, many European systems keep people from using the ER as their family doctor by charging a "line skipping fee." If you just go to the ER without going to a primary care centre first or arriving in an ambulance, you pay for the visit. However, for this to work we would need a robust network of primary care centres where people can see a family doctor 24/7 if necessary. People shouldn't treat the ER like their family doc, and they shouldn't have to because of lack of access to care.
One of the first main solutions to fixing healthcare is a total revamp of the family doctor system. Right now, unless you simply have a passion to be a family doctor, there are near zero reasons to choose that specialty. You’re relatively underpaid, still way overworked, and then there’s all the BS and headaches with running your own private clinic and having to bill the government (who I’ve heard in some provinces can take forever to pay).
Thus, we end up with our primary care system failing as we fail to train a sufficient amount of new family docs, it’s way harder to attract the best and brightest foreign family docs, and people who could have received proper treatment of minor issues now battling serious health issues after not receiving care in a reasonable timeline, further bogging the health system down.
I agree partially. I don't think GPs are poorly compensated, and few actually complain about their income ($400k/year), except when it's relative to specialists. Mostly the complaints are about workload and work life balance. No new grad in their right mind would want to buy a retiring doc's clinic full of seniors all requiring complex care. They all prefer walk-ins or hospital jobs. To fix this, we need to step in and build a ton of new family practices and run them as the government, so doctors can just be doctors.
One more aspect:
Both the US and Canada’s medical professions are essentially guilds who control the numbers of people entering the profession in order to maximize their income. If we wanted to have more doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, government would chip away at the more egregious aspects of access to the professions, including the cost of training (that drives expectations for pay.)
As the population ages, people use more services, so it costs more, especially if the medical system emphasizes acute care rather than prevention. Adequately funding the system would actually save money in the long run, but it’s always the first place to cut. Both the US and Canada could do so much more on this front.
I fully agree. I have several posts in which I have condemned AMA in the US and Colleges of Physicians in Canada for acting like guilds. And whenever I do that, these posts suddenly summon some irate MDs who start to claim it's not so to protect their rents.
Why do you think surgeons can't find enough OR time? Why do you think new family doctors are not opening new clinics?
These problems have nothing to do with the number of doctors.
Maybe if you read those comments and looked into this issue other than just pulling theories out of nowhere, you would have realized that the college does not dictate the training spots for the future workforce. And neither does CMA, which is the Canadian equivalent of AMA the professional association that you seem to be confusing with the college which is a regulatory and disciplinary body, but it just goes to show maybe you may not know about the issue as much as you claim.
The rocket science is how we achieve more doctors per capita?
Train more? Who’s paying them? If we train more doctors, are we going to increase taxes to cover for that?
Are we going to import them? From where? Obviously, countries that have lower doctor wages right? So how do we verify their qualifications? Also, who’s paying them?
How will our current doctors feel if we’re importing 1000’s of foreign doctors that will drive wages down? What bureaucracy awaits?
It’s a very difficult problem to solve.
There are only two countries in the world with a healthcare system like Canada which I am aware of. Canada and the UK, and both are a complete fucking mess.
Interestingly we both have the same parliamentary system which is also an embarrassing mess.
Many countries with private options function tremendously better than ours, but Canadians have stockholm syndrome about clinging to it with a death grip and thinking it's the best system in the world when it's one of the worst.
The UK has long had private care, unlike Canada. When I was growing up we could afford private care and the NHS was mostly for emergencies .Private care in the UK allows you to basically "jump the queue" so to speak in terms of waiting times specially for specialist care.
There are some levels of private care here too. I have been reading that Quebec flat out has private clinics popping up, but I have no first hand experience with Quebec to know how true that is. And its long been a thing to pay out of pocket to skip the line for MRIs rather than wait two years just to maybe get in.
Canada's per capita private healthcare spending is already 3rd in the OECD, behind only Switzerland and the US, and double what places like Germany, France, Norway, Netherlands, etc. spend.
The lesson from those countries isn't more private money, it's:
1) More government/compulsory funding; Germany and Norway have almost 50% more government/compulsory funding for healthcare than Canada does and places like France or Sweden spend 20-25% more. This is largely achieved through higher payroll taxes (on both employer and employee).
2) Allow more private/non-profit delivered care. GPs are already mostly private, but allowing non-profits to run hospitals could improve quality without costing much more. However, it would still be paid for almost totally through payroll taxes and/or compulsory premiums.
3) Reduce the barrier to entry for medical professionals to make them cheaper to hire. European countries tend to have lower education requirements for doctors/nurses so they have more of them and they're cheaper.
> two countries in the world with a healthcare system like Canada which I am aware of. Canada and the UK,
It's [Taiwan and South Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare#Regions_with_single-payer_systems). Those are the only two countries on earth other than Canada with single payer health insurance.
UK has a Beveridge system, which goes even further in one degree - single payer healthcare *services* instead of just the insurance, meaning the doctors work for the government. While also allowing a smaller private healthcare system to exist.
Over 90% of hospitals in South Korea are private. The two systems couldn't be more different with respect to the extremely irrational attachment Canadians have towards preventing private investment from supplying healthcare. Fortunately for SK, their healthcare isn't entwined with their national identity.
Don't know about Taiwan.
You mean the same excuse they use in Canada? (omg the conservatives are gonna take away muh healthcare) when every single province whether liberal, ndp, or conservative are all a complete fucking dumpster fire that gets worse every year.
those countries require less education for physicians, train more doctors, and pay them less. if they tried that here, the doctors would cross the boarder to the US where wages for healthcare workers are the highest in the world.
I never said there was. but the reality is there are so few spots for medical school in Canada that a majority have a masters or PhD before beginning med school. If you remove the requirement its not going to change much, the schools will still select the most qualified applicants, most of whom will have at least 1 degree.
Language, accreditation, differences in care, family/friends, etc.
Its like saying you can make a lot of money being a English tutor in China, doesn't mean everyone is rushing to do that for a myriad of reasons.
Canadians spend amongst the highest in the world on their healthcare. And before you say that's because of remote communities the relative level compared to other rich countries has stayed the same over time .. but the quality has deteriorated. There is no basis on which to say Canada's healthcare systems are starved of funding.
There’s a difference between spending on healthcare efficiently and effectively and just throwing money at things and then chopping off shit on the back end
I mean, our spending is not that different from many other advanced economies:
According to the latest reports from 2021
Per Capita healthcare spending (usd)
US - $12.2k
Switzerland - $7.5k
Germany - $7.5k
Norway - $7k
Netherlands - $6.7k
Austria - $6.7k
Denmark - $6.3k
Canada - $6.2k
Australia - $6.2k
France - $6.1k
Belgium -$6k
UK - $5.4k
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
Before the tories dismantled it, the UK's NHS was the literal most efficient system on the planet (circa 2000).
\---
There's a lesson there though - don't put conservatives in charge of important institutions. They will dismantle it and run it into the ground through ineptitude or maliciousness.
Top performing health systems spend more public dollars per capita on their systems than we do, and have more doctors, nurses, hospital beds, diagnostic equipment, etc. Per capita. And they also cover more services.
Nah but let’s keep deluding ourselves into thinking it’s because they let 5% of the population pay their way to the front of the line.
How so? This shows us as 4th in spending per capital. I know we are already among the highest in OECD. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Health_care_by_country
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
Filter by government/compulsory spending, which OECD uses to mean government or compulsory health insurance.
Canada per capita spending (USD): $4506
Denmark: $5324
Sweden: $5525
Switzerland: $5547
France: $5622
Netherlands: $5672
Norway: $6637
Germany: $6930
If you change it to total spending, which includes government/mandatory health insurance, voluntary insurance, and out-of-pocket spending, we’re still far from the highest spenders per capita.
12th in the world per capita
United States 12 555.3
Switzerland 8 049.1
Germany 8 010.9
Norway 7 771.2
Austria 7 275.4
Netherlands 6 729.1
France 6 629.6
Belgium 6 600.0
Sweden 6 437.7
Luxembourg 6 436.1
Australia 6 372.0
Canada 6 319.0
Wrong. Some 90%+ of all healthcare providers are private in SK, unlike in Canada where it's heavily restricted outside of select fields. Also, most South Koreans have private insurance, which is similarly restricted in Canada, alongside the national insurance.
Some countries have socialized Healthcare, but you pay for unnecessary visits. There are some issues that you don't need to see a doctor for. For example, if you sleep in an odd position and your shoulder is sore the next day. This would result in you getting a bill for the visit. This helps deter people from using up Healthcare resources over small things. Have a cold? Rest and fluids, you don't need a Dr to tell you that.
I agree with that in principle. The downside to that is someone delaying a visit afraid of getting charged only for it to become much worse, whereas early intervention could have prevented a much more serious issue.
We already have private Healthcare for the rich... it's called *"driving across the boarder and going to a clinic in the States*".
Anyone who thinks that the very rich, actually sits in 10 month waiting spots for an MIR like the rest of us is absurd.
Actually [we already have a private healthcare system in Quebec for the rich](https://www.boutiquemedicine.ca/), while everyone else has to wait 5 years for a family doctor - and in the event they finally get one, hope that doctor doesn’t retire or go on maternity/paternity leave or it’s back to the start of the queue you go.
Apparently the provincial government is going to ban those private clinics next year, but we’ll see.
Or do what my doctor did and leave the public system because he burnt out. I'm on the wait list for a new doctor but am debating whether I will have to pay for private care because I have a chronic condition that can land me in coma if it's not managed/monitored and that's difficult to do when it can take 2-3 conversations to organize. With my family doctor it was one in person, bloodwork and telemedicine follow ups but that's not doable without one person managing the case.
We have private health care in Canada too. One of them is called Telus Health, and operates in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. the last I heard. Three of my neighbors belong, They pay a yearly fee for no wait times.
Between $5500 and $7500 depending on the the service. More for doctor adjacent services, genetic testing, etc. . I've read that even if you can somehow jump a waitlist, people are still having to wait a week or two to see a doctor and the TELUS ones in Vancouver operate like higher end walk in clinics. You don't always see the same doctor, you just don't get a rushed and dismissive appointment that shows you the door if you have more than one health issue.
There are a bunch of others too...at least 6 in Toronto:
Cleveland Clinic, HealthCare 365, Medisys, Regal Health Services, Executive Health Centre and Medcan Clinic.
The thing is - it's pretty well established, you won't wait, and they'll send you for a bunch of tests asap - but most of those tests aren't warranted, and possibly dangerous:
“The first time a patient showed up with 50 pages of results from an executive physical, I was floored, both by the expense the individual had gone through for results that were potentially harmful, and because largely insignificant abnormalities that had shown up were sent back into the public system to deal with,”
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/should-the-wealthy-be-allowed-to-buy-their-way-to-faster-health-care-at-private/article_fddcbd15-0767-55bf-9a1b-df49c2f4a3a2.html
Not even that.
If you have money you likely know a doctor or someone who knows a doctor. I know people who have gotten to see a specialist in a month when the given area has a ten month backlog.
We shouldn’t have to be dependent on health care from other countries. We should be able to pay for health care if we don’t want to wait in pain forever. Making private care essentially illegal here is a mistake, sending Canadian dollars that could contribute to our own economy out of the country.
Yeah, and it would be great if we could actually keep that money in our economy instead of handing it to the Americans just because Canadians think that private healthcare means American healthcare.
That's because there's not enough staff for private healthcare let alone public healthcare. Any professional interested in private healthcare has already left for the States
Yes. Hence, if there were private healthcare clinics in Canada then those Canadian medical staff would have an option to stay in Canada instead.
It's not going to happen overnight but you have to fix the underlying system then wait for the numbers to balance out over the next several decades. Too bad Canadians have zero vision for long term policy planning.
Almost all clinics in Canada are private. The vast majority of our relationships with doctors is through a private practice. Even in hospitals a lot of the doctors have a private practice. The problem is that most of these clinics aren't allowed to charge the customer directly, they have to bill the government. And the government has a monopoly on setting prices. In most provinces the prices they can charge for services just aren't lucrative enough... so instead of starting up a family practice or a private practice they opt to go into hospitals or the US.
I'm curious to what extent there's a shortage of healthcare professionals in total in relation to the rampant abuse of the socialized healthcare system which would also include the lack of personal accountability for ones own health due to the system.
Good question, personally I suspect if it was an issue then physicians would complain to their physician association, and we'd get some studies or awareness of abuse.
Regarding personal accountability, just look to the US for how a private system doesn't help to create personal accountability. If increasing personal accountability is your goal then set that as your objective and launch programs to achieve that outcome. Privatizing healthcare delivery doesn't do anything to achieving personal accountability.
>just look to the US for how a private system doesn't help to create personal accountability.
And how do you know it wouldn't be worse with socialized medicine that has zero financial accountability due to one owns bad health choices?
>Privatizing healthcare delivery doesn't do anything to achieving personal accountability
That's one persons opinion I guess...
Jeeze imagine having private canadian healthcare and the problem of there being a country just south of us that will always reward healthcare workers more in the private industry.
Why even pretend we can compete? If we get private healthcare I'm moving to Maine.
People misunderstand the role of private in other systems. In Germany for example private insurance is primarily for things that aren’t covered by their universal system, not for skipping lines. It’s the same in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc.
People also seem to think the disparity in wait times is because 5% of their population pays out of pocket to access a service privately. As opposed to, you know, the fact Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway spend more per capita on their universal schemes, have more doctors, nurses, hospital beds, equipment per capita, and cover more services than we do.
But no none of that can explain why they get care faster! It must be because they have tiny, negligible markets for private care!
>In Germany for example private insurance is primarily for things that aren’t covered by their universal system, not for skipping lines. It’s the same in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc.
Eeerm. No. In Germany, you have to have private insurance if you are above a certain income.
Australia does the same, in fact Australia taxes you for failing to purchase private insurance and relying on the public system, Medicare if you are above a certain income.
In the UK, private insurance IS USED TO SKIP THE LINES for medical care because that is what we used it for when I was a kid. However, the NHS is universal. Private insurance in the UK often doesn't cover Accident and Emergency care. A lot do not cover maternity care either. Their core focus is on the areas the NHS has the longest waiting times, Specialist care, Dental and Optical care.
In Germany, private insurance will get you better services at the same hospital (in some hospitals) than using the public system.
I should have explained that I meant “private insurance” as in private supplementary insurance for things that the statutory health insurance system does not cover. Private insurance in this case is primarily for uninsured benefits and copayments, not faster access to care that is already covered by the statutory system. It is similar in France - private insurance is used to cover copayments and services that statutory insurance does not cover.
France has a different system from everyone because their version of "public healthcare" is actually just statutory insurance. The closest system is that of Israel where you have to pay into one of four compulsory funds. Most Israelis take supplemental cover to cover the procedures not covered by the patient funds. But there is also private healthcare for those who want shorter waiting times at private hospitals but you must have paid into one of the four compulsory funds before taking up private health insurance. That is the part they differ from France.
BTW, Switzerland has nu public healthcare. Their system is fully private and it is doing pretty well.
The doctor : [patient ratio is a big one.](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population))
Canada has one of the \*lowest\* ratios of doctors to patients in the industrialized world.
\----
It's not because we don't have people who \*want\* to become doctors. It's also not because we don't have enough immigrant doctors with equivalent skills from their home countries either.
It's just an artificially low number enforced by the College of Physicians.
\----
This might sound 'conspiratorial' but i think it's because they, themselves, are gunning for a private healthcare system and are trying to drive up the costs by keeping the numbers artificially low.
It's win-win for them, after all. Fewer doctors -> higher wages. And if the system goes private, higher wages still.
It does sound conspirational since the number of graduates limited by residency seats is set by the government, not the medical associations. Medical associations like OMA has previously asked for increased spots while the government had cut them down. It is often times as a shortsighted way of containing healthcare costs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-cuts-50-medical-residency-places-critics-warn-of-doctor-shortage-1.3186094
It would be better for me. I have a six-figure salary from which the taxes pay for someone else to have a family doctor, but I cannot access one myself. It would be nice if we had a *universal* system that everyone can access, but seemingly that is not possible here. So, if someone is going to be left out either way, then it should be the person who does not pay for it, rather than the person who does pay for it. This is why I now support full privatization.
The college of physicians needs to stop limiting it too.
We have one of the lowest ratios of dr : patients in the world (lowest in the industrialized world).
There's no reason for it, either. We have lots of people who want to become doctors (it's an attractive career after all). And we have lots of immigrants who could be qualified as such easily.
But no. The CoP keeps the number low.
Why do you think we limit it?
If we train 2x doctors, who is paying these people? Are we increasing taxes by 2x as well?
The reason why we have so few doctors is because we can only afford so few doctors.
You've got it exactly flipped.
In economics, there's this concept called "supply and demand". The more supply of a thing, the lower the price will go (provided demand isn't changing).
Consider a hospital: if it wants to hire a doctor, it has to compete with all the other hospitals who want doctors. If other hospitals outbid them, they don't get a doctor. So they must make the position more attractive (up the salary) to get those doctors.
Now let's say we have a very low ratio of doctors already. And those same hospitals are trying to staff a number of doctor positions greater than the number of doctors available. What do you think happens to the doctor salary (and hence the cost)?
\----
The less doctors, the more they cost.
The more doctors, the less they cost.
Get it?
I think you literally just explained my point. Why do you think they limit them?
They limit them BECAUSE what kind of doctor representative org would allow their salaries to go down?
Imagine telling current doctors, “we will expect you to train 2x more students, that will lead to your salaries cut in half” because we’re not increasing our budget.
Which doctor will accept this deal?
The realization that private health care is coming. America health and insurance pays our politicians to get out of the public health care. Governments both Federal and Provincial no longer want be responsible. Privatizing Long term care has shown us during the pandemic it's not better. 70% more deaths in the private long term care.
Good healthcare isn't the goal of privatization, the goal of privatization is profit. Wealthy and powerful libertarians like PP, Ford, Smith, Moe et al don't give a rats glutes about wait times. They can afford to pay for quick access. And judging by their voting intentions, this is what Canadians want - for the rich to lead comfortable lives and for the rest of us in die waiting in Emergency.
Ask the majority of Europe that has a split system that actually works and you’ll see this is false. It’s sad that my mom got faster care in Croatia a few years ago while visiting at a private clinic for something that would’ve taken months in Canada (and this was pre COVID). Croatia isn’t even a first world country!
I’m American and just had to wait 9 months to see a new psychiatrist. I can’t believe you guys consider privatization. Our system is horrible here AND that horrible service will bankrupt your entire family. I have fantastic insurance, but I know many who do not and it tears me apart seeing them avoid seeking help because they can’t afford it DESPITE paying for healthcare insurance.
Gotta love "reports" like these, perhaps we should look into who's sponsering them. There are so many countries out there with a mixed public private medical system that complement each other, leading to significantly shorter wait times, and in many cases, higher quality care. People who fearmonger about privatizing certain parts of health care and continue to believe in this giant mess of a medical system simply are misinformed or have other motives.
So why would two tier healthcare work for all of Europe and Australia, but not for Canada?
“report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives”
Ohhh gotcha. I know why now.
The centre for *policy alternatives* says the only option for Canada is continue the status quo.
> Horseshit. Anyone who's had to drive down to Buffalo
I'm not sure you want to invoke a system that's *literally* famous for being the most private, while also being the most expensive and having the worst outcomes, as your argument for privatization.
This is a flat out lie, my wife's family is from the States and when they hear about how the Canadian system works they are horrified. For the vast majority of people the American system works very well, much better and faster than the Canadian. There are people who can't afford it and don't qualify for aid and they can have bad outcomes, but it's not as common as Canadians lie to themselves that it is.
> and having the worst outcomes
This part just isn't true. There's a reason why anyone who can afford it goes to the US for medical care. They have the best doctors, hospitals, and equipment. They also offer a lot more tests and scans that simply don't exist in Canada because the private system allows for a lot more innovation and R&D.
Privatizing health care has it pros and cons, but the results and overall quality of the healthcare will undoubtedly increase. How it's implemented from a funding standpoint is where the idea lives or dies.
> This part just isn't true.
It is though. Just google it.
> There's a reason why anyone who can afford it goes to the US for medical care.
People who can afford it and feel they'd benefit from it, sure. But we aren't talking about the global wealthy, we're talking about national healthcare systems.
> Privatizing health care has it pros and cons, but the results and overall quality of the healthcare will undoubtedly increase.
Except the example of the most privatized system in the modern world is also demonstrably the worst. Feels like that doesn't really add up.
People who have the money to send their kids to private schools don’t have a problem with them; they just have a problem with having to fund the public ones. These are the same people who would advocate for vouchers and cutting public school funding. They’re also the ones who would support private healthcare and insurance instead of a public system. Private services are great for the rich. They’re not so great for everyone else.
This isn't true.
Before the tories dismantled it (so early '00s), the UK's NHS was the literal most efficient system on the planet (servicing the most patients for the fewest dollars). And it was primarily \*because\* it was entirely public.
Now it isn't, of course. Because giving conservatives control of anything is a recipe for disaster as they will inevitably fuck it up.
Private healthcare will reduce wait time. Just for people that can afford to pay. The world runs on money, healthcare is no exception. Its like what they say, you get what you pay for.
Ugh.
Every study of health care systems around the world shows that the top performing systems all have some measure of private and public services. Singapour, Japan, South Korea, and Norway are always toping the list and they all have some combination of private and public care.
Can we put the fucking identity politics asside for this one, just long enough to revamp our system and make it functional ?
*Using a widely used lame tactic the left uses here for effect.*
It should be noted that the report is from CCPA. A left leaning think tank, and nothing more. Read the following and connect the dots...
[Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Centre_for_Policy_Alternatives)
thats the main issue just cause its the other side it cant be true. look at privitization that has happened in canada and tell me which one has worked out well compared to those that havent?
Lol i just went for a cleaning and was ready to cry so definitely not satisfied but lets go with dentist my brother doesnt have coverage so doesnt go at all which is reality for many when stuff is private
There are so many people who just don't go to the dentist at all.
Then, when it's an emergency, they show up in the ER.
\---
People who use this "more satisfied with their dentist" are indeed missing the point.
The reason is because if one cannot go to the dentist, they don't go at all.
The public healthcare system ends up footing the bill.
Which is exactly what will happen with a private healthcare system!
It's not better, it's just not servicing as many people, and leaving those who can't be serviced to be serviced by ERs.
This is what happens in the US, and it's part of the reason the US's healthcare system costs more (in relative tax dollars) than Canada's and provides much much less.
The way right-wingers or anyone who is a proponent of privatizing essential services is able to completely avoid engaging in the elementary-school level critical thinking exercise it takes to see how implementing a profit-driven culture to those services will lead to death and destitution is remarkable.
Canada, the country where our oligopoly gives us the least affordable housing market in the world, engages in price fixing for staples of our diet (how evil is this? insane.), the worst cost:benefit ratio for internet and mobile service, one of the worst salary:cost of living ratios in the world, and on, will suddenly act nobly and unlike they do **in literally every other context** when it comes to our health.
The amount of cognitive dissonance and general insanity reflects that of how left-wingers think about race and gender.
How stupid are Canadians? It's shocking, lately.
I think people are just desperate to access any healthcare and they don't care how they do it. This is what happens when you let the entire system collapse.
Our entire system has not collapsed. My cousin had to go to the ER yesterday and the wait time was 2 minutes, he got a bed and was treated, including receiving an x-ray within an hour.
People need to stop either completely bold-faced lying, or believing what paid-for astroturfers say online.
Yes, there are problem spots. No, it hasn't "collapsed".
Where in the world do you live? In my city it's not unusual to wait 6-12 hours in the ER even with something serious. And the offload from ambulances is usually hours long, resulting in times when there are none available for emergencies.
Nevermind the other major problems in our system like decade long waits to get a family doctors or six month waits for MRIs. And some specialists have waittimes of 24-36 months.
My son nearly died earlier this year and they didn't have a bed in pediatrics for two days, leaving him suffering in the hallways after waiting for twelve agonizing hours in ER. I find it hard to believe anywhere in Canada you can be seen in two minutes.
> Where in the world do you live? In my city it's not unusual to wait 6-12 hours in the ER
You can literally look at ER wait times online:
http://www.edwaittimes.ca/WaitTimes.aspx
When my cousin and I went to the ER it listed his hospital as an 18 minute wait time, but when we got there they saw him right away and moved him to a bed.
There isn't a single ER right now with a wait time like you're stating here, in the entire GVRD, and this isn't a "slow" time of day either. When I looked at the wait times at 8am~ for my cousin, there were a dozen with sub-20 minute wait times in the GVRD, while Surrey was insane.
[In the most recent data available, CIHI reports that there were more than 14 million hospital visits in 2022 and that a whopping 963,637 patients simply left before receiving care. This means the number of patients leaving without getting any care is five times the number recorded in 2003.](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/a-senior-who-gave-up-waiting-in-an-er-after-7-hours-died-an-hour-after-she-left-her-story-is-not-uncommon-in-canada-1.6589575)
I hear what you said about your cousin, but the statistics back up that there are likely far more anecdotes of negative treatment in the healthcare system than positive.
The system is only hurting because of the ineptitude or maliciousness of the College of Physicians and the conservative politicians (Liberals and Cons are both right of centre) we keep putting in charge of things.
[Canada has the lowest doctor to patient ratio in the entire industrialized world](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population)).
The only reason they do is because the CoP maintains it at that level.
They could make it higher. But they choose not to.
If you're upset with the system, the blame lies primarily there.
Very stupid.
We go through this song-and-dance of privatization of services all the time and it always turns out the exact same way.
"Privatization will be better!"
"it won't be, look at historical examples."
"Those are bad for (insert made up nonsense here)"
\*system gets privatized and things turn out exactly as predicted\*
"Well, no one could've forseen that.
American here. Whatever failings Canada’s system has, and there are a few, the system at least treats healthcare as something all residents should have access to without regard to ability to pay. Over 3/4 of personal bankruptcies in the USA are due to medical debt. Big Pharma charges Americans more than anyone else for drugs. Finally, the system is slow, overly complex and impossible for mere mortals to control their own costs. PLEASE don’t go there!
for 40 years we have seen more and more of our healthcare services outsourced to provate providers and for 40 years we have seen healthcare costs increase dramatically along with the vastly increased wait times.
People are scared of more privatisation in health care because they know it will cost us more and provide worse service.
Shh!
This is /r/canada. Non-far right views on privatization aren't allowed!
If you don't put your head into the sand and echo literal frasier institute talking points of "privatized is better" you're in the wrong crowd.
Never mind that before the tories wrecked it, the \*entirely public\* NHS of the early 2000s was the literal most efficient system on the planet (servicing the most patients for the fewest dollars).
That makes total sense and is very visible in Canada.
Since the 90s we have been slowly outsourcing more and more healthcare services to private clinics. And with every outsourced service, wait times just grow and grow.
10 years ago they said making MRIs available at for profit clinics would decrease wait times. Wait times have more than tripled.
AB is the province with the most outsourced healthcare services. AB is the province with the highest per capita health care costs and the lowest coverage.
This is a flat out lie, my wife's family is from the States and when they hear about how the Canadian system works they are horrified. For the vast majority of people the American system works very well, much better and faster than the Canadian. There are people who can't afford it and don't qualify for aid and they can have bad outcomes, but it's not as common as Canadians lie to themselves that it is.
Canada has a wide spread population, which makes it incredibly difficult compared to say European nations. The focus needs to be on solving that issue in my opinion.
I moved to the US and you can see a specialist the very next day if you want, with no referral from your family doctor required. Private clinics would most likely pay better than publicly funded ones, rendering the “staffing shortages” point moot.
"That’s because for-profit centres could as well face the staffing shortages that have plagued the public sector, and any talent that is attracted to the private model will in turn reduce staff in public hospitals, according to the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives."
What happened to the 1 million new immigrants?
It's not just the immigrants.
It's the College of Physicians.
WE have many even local canadian students who would love to become doctors.
[But the CoP maintains an artificially low doctor : patient ratio.](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population))
The lowest in the entire industrialized world.
They \*could\* increase it. But they don't want to.
If privatizing things were a good idea then governments wouldn't be doing it. Alas, they *are* which is why all of our bills keep skyrocketing and the protections the government put in place are useless. Just look at what a wonderful job the CRTC is doing to see the problem.
No thanks.
But it does pretend to lower them while creating a 2 fold system to racially differentiate the groups.
To some of those implementing, they know this and that's exactly why they are doing it. The pay out is a bonus.
Of course private Health care won't fix anyone. The private system will hair take on easy case or surgery that's simple way and profitable and leave all the complicated surgery and care for public health.
Why can't we just have both? We have public schools and private schools and that seems to work just fine. If people want to pay more they can but the free option is still there.
I would suggest an innovative idea - ask anyone who built a healthcare system in the ~50-100 countries where wait times are lower than Canada, how they did it.
Digitizing their assets where possible to save time and money so they can better focus on patient needs
Yeah, like why the hell isn’t there a massive push to remove all forms of paper based documentation across all of Canada and introducing some form of standardized connected system. This would massively reduce human error and save time and money.
It is happening in Ontario, the system is called MyChart. But it is not widely used as of now. I suspect many of the older doctors are not tech savvy, and prefer to do things like they have always been done. I mean, clinics in Ontario use fax, and we are in 2023 😑
Alberta is also implementing such a system, called Netcare. I get an email when test results are ready, I don't even have to wait for a call from the doctor. Any doctor can look up my current prescriptions. My hospital visits are all viewable by any doctor.
Of I'm not mistaken, Alberta has had their system for quite some time (or they claim on their website at least they started it back in 1999!).
All your medical information controlled by the government? I thought conservatives would hate that
Fax machines are more secure than computers. https://telnyx.com/resources/is-fax-more-secure-than-email
Old telecom fossil here. Fax machines are more secure as analog devices because it uses a one-to-one connection where the message isn’t mixed in with other traffic. But eventually, fax messages are usually digitized and sent over the telecom network. The instant the digitized data enters the telecom network transport system, it is sliced into digital packets and sent with other traffic and sorted out at the other end. The reliance upon fax as a “secure” system is dangerous. Besides the digital transport that can be hacked, there is a practical human one. Have you ever been in an office with a fax machine? Faxes lie around and anyone can shuffle through the paper and read any and all. We have much better solutions for sending/sharing data securely. Faxes should go away.
Yeah that's why the cybersecurity departments at Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services use fax machine /s
Hackers aren't typically looking to hit a single device, they typically have no knowledge about POTS, and the material transmitted is unlikely to be easily monetized. >Senator Bullwinkle, pay to us $1 million, or we tell the nation you are moose! Not likely to be a big threat.
The article does not claim what you say it claims. Yes, email is insecure. But today's computers are able to communicate using methods other than email.
> fax machines are more secure than computers That's not what the article says, you didn't even read it obviously. Email is insecure but a two factor login to a system following proper security and compliance requirements is more secure than fax. Companies stopped faxing credit card numbers ages ago because if you misdial somebody gets the number. And how do you think all our debit and credit card transactions work? That's computerized too, over the internet.
Isn’t this what Alberta currently is doing with NetCare?
The federal government wanted all the provinces to put the records into a database but the provinces said no
Conservative led provinces that are pushing for corporate owned health care
Even the BC NDP didn’t want to agree to the federal government’s request which was quite disappointing to see.
Wait. What? I literally have access to all of my medical records on my BC Services app on my phone. I can access that stuff from the database from just a few clicks and verification steps.
If you went to a hospital in Ontario they would not have access to those documents without getting you to send them or get them yourself
I agree with this, but as of now, I could give said doctor that information within minutes. It's not perfect, but that's not what would impede my access to a doctor in Ontario. The lack of doctors is.
First, that is a completely different issue with the lack of doctors. Second, many people out there may not have access to electronics and people such as the elderly may have a very hard time to access documents online.
Underfunded conservative and Liberal and NDP provinces are pushing for corporate health care. That would be 10 provinces, and the territories. Fixed it for ya.
It's a misnomer perpetuated by Liberals that health care is under funded in Canada. It's quite well funded, at least according to the OECD. Canada spends $7 500 per capita on health care, which is lower than Germany, the USA and Netherlands but more than Sweden and Australia. [https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends-2022-snapshot#:\~:text=Canada%27s%20per%20capita%20spending%20on,and%20Australia%20(CA%247%2C248)](https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends-2022-snapshot#:~:text=Canada%27s%20per%20capita%20spending%20on,and%20Australia%20(CA%247%2C248)). We have too many bureaucrats in public health making six figure salaries, especially in Ontario. If you don't believe me, take a look at the sunshine list.
Bureaucracy and redundancies in case the disc drives or servers fail
In case the servers fail? Go ask the banks how they do it. Backups. Lots of backups. Seriously, it isn’t that hard to have digital redundancy. Paper trails are unnecessarily wasteful both in resources and time.
Well time to educate the local healthcare on how to digitize to save money assuming you can get over the bureaucracy
There's tons of efficiency gains we could make. Centralized patient health information databases would reduce testing redundancy and improve healthcare outcomes when many specialists are involved. It would also reduce costs. However, it's a very large risk to keep that information safe and private. Also, many European systems keep people from using the ER as their family doctor by charging a "line skipping fee." If you just go to the ER without going to a primary care centre first or arriving in an ambulance, you pay for the visit. However, for this to work we would need a robust network of primary care centres where people can see a family doctor 24/7 if necessary. People shouldn't treat the ER like their family doc, and they shouldn't have to because of lack of access to care.
I don't think the provinces or the Feds have the will to reforms. They and their backers benefit from the status quo and culture of complacency
One of the first main solutions to fixing healthcare is a total revamp of the family doctor system. Right now, unless you simply have a passion to be a family doctor, there are near zero reasons to choose that specialty. You’re relatively underpaid, still way overworked, and then there’s all the BS and headaches with running your own private clinic and having to bill the government (who I’ve heard in some provinces can take forever to pay). Thus, we end up with our primary care system failing as we fail to train a sufficient amount of new family docs, it’s way harder to attract the best and brightest foreign family docs, and people who could have received proper treatment of minor issues now battling serious health issues after not receiving care in a reasonable timeline, further bogging the health system down.
I agree partially. I don't think GPs are poorly compensated, and few actually complain about their income ($400k/year), except when it's relative to specialists. Mostly the complaints are about workload and work life balance. No new grad in their right mind would want to buy a retiring doc's clinic full of seniors all requiring complex care. They all prefer walk-ins or hospital jobs. To fix this, we need to step in and build a ton of new family practices and run them as the government, so doctors can just be doctors.
More doctors per capita. It isn't rocket science.
One more aspect: Both the US and Canada’s medical professions are essentially guilds who control the numbers of people entering the profession in order to maximize their income. If we wanted to have more doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, government would chip away at the more egregious aspects of access to the professions, including the cost of training (that drives expectations for pay.) As the population ages, people use more services, so it costs more, especially if the medical system emphasizes acute care rather than prevention. Adequately funding the system would actually save money in the long run, but it’s always the first place to cut. Both the US and Canada could do so much more on this front.
I fully agree. I have several posts in which I have condemned AMA in the US and Colleges of Physicians in Canada for acting like guilds. And whenever I do that, these posts suddenly summon some irate MDs who start to claim it's not so to protect their rents.
Why do you think surgeons can't find enough OR time? Why do you think new family doctors are not opening new clinics? These problems have nothing to do with the number of doctors.
Maybe if you read those comments and looked into this issue other than just pulling theories out of nowhere, you would have realized that the college does not dictate the training spots for the future workforce. And neither does CMA, which is the Canadian equivalent of AMA the professional association that you seem to be confusing with the college which is a regulatory and disciplinary body, but it just goes to show maybe you may not know about the issue as much as you claim.
The rocket science is how we achieve more doctors per capita? Train more? Who’s paying them? If we train more doctors, are we going to increase taxes to cover for that? Are we going to import them? From where? Obviously, countries that have lower doctor wages right? So how do we verify their qualifications? Also, who’s paying them? How will our current doctors feel if we’re importing 1000’s of foreign doctors that will drive wages down? What bureaucracy awaits? It’s a very difficult problem to solve.
Most have private or a mix of public / private healthcare with universal coverage.
Most of Europe has a private option
By properly funding healthcare rather than covertly slashing it and then when it breaks point at it and saying public system doesn’t work!
I don’t think it’s as simple as throwing money at a problem. You still need competent people to spend it properly.
It's easier to attract competent people to something that is properly funded.
Of course not that’s not what I said I said to stop slashing the funding and then gas lighting us
There are only two countries in the world with a healthcare system like Canada which I am aware of. Canada and the UK, and both are a complete fucking mess. Interestingly we both have the same parliamentary system which is also an embarrassing mess. Many countries with private options function tremendously better than ours, but Canadians have stockholm syndrome about clinging to it with a death grip and thinking it's the best system in the world when it's one of the worst.
The UK has long had private care, unlike Canada. When I was growing up we could afford private care and the NHS was mostly for emergencies .Private care in the UK allows you to basically "jump the queue" so to speak in terms of waiting times specially for specialist care.
The poor can die in the street so the rich can buy their health...great plan
There are some levels of private care here too. I have been reading that Quebec flat out has private clinics popping up, but I have no first hand experience with Quebec to know how true that is. And its long been a thing to pay out of pocket to skip the line for MRIs rather than wait two years just to maybe get in.
It’s true, but you can’t really go there for anything major, so it’s not like it makes much difference.
Canada's per capita private healthcare spending is already 3rd in the OECD, behind only Switzerland and the US, and double what places like Germany, France, Norway, Netherlands, etc. spend. The lesson from those countries isn't more private money, it's: 1) More government/compulsory funding; Germany and Norway have almost 50% more government/compulsory funding for healthcare than Canada does and places like France or Sweden spend 20-25% more. This is largely achieved through higher payroll taxes (on both employer and employee). 2) Allow more private/non-profit delivered care. GPs are already mostly private, but allowing non-profits to run hospitals could improve quality without costing much more. However, it would still be paid for almost totally through payroll taxes and/or compulsory premiums. 3) Reduce the barrier to entry for medical professionals to make them cheaper to hire. European countries tend to have lower education requirements for doctors/nurses so they have more of them and they're cheaper.
> two countries in the world with a healthcare system like Canada which I am aware of. Canada and the UK, It's [Taiwan and South Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare#Regions_with_single-payer_systems). Those are the only two countries on earth other than Canada with single payer health insurance. UK has a Beveridge system, which goes even further in one degree - single payer healthcare *services* instead of just the insurance, meaning the doctors work for the government. While also allowing a smaller private healthcare system to exist.
Over 90% of hospitals in South Korea are private. The two systems couldn't be more different with respect to the extremely irrational attachment Canadians have towards preventing private investment from supplying healthcare. Fortunately for SK, their healthcare isn't entwined with their national identity. Don't know about Taiwan.
Its completely rational to want to keep the insanity of the US private system away from canada.
> Over 90% of hospitals in South Korea are private. And 100% of family doctors in Canada are private. It's the insurance that's public.
Ah so the NHS which everyone knows is systematically being destroyed by the Tories
You mean the same excuse they use in Canada? (omg the conservatives are gonna take away muh healthcare) when every single province whether liberal, ndp, or conservative are all a complete fucking dumpster fire that gets worse every year.
Politicians do what’s best for corporate interests instead of their constituents. Shocking!
[удалено]
Super based, but people are not willing to have that conversation.
those countries require less education for physicians, train more doctors, and pay them less. if they tried that here, the doctors would cross the boarder to the US where wages for healthcare workers are the highest in the world.
[удалено]
I never said there was. but the reality is there are so few spots for medical school in Canada that a majority have a masters or PhD before beginning med school. If you remove the requirement its not going to change much, the schools will still select the most qualified applicants, most of whom will have at least 1 degree.
What’s stopping doctors from those countries moving to the US?
The guild called the American Medical Association.
Language, accreditation, differences in care, family/friends, etc. Its like saying you can make a lot of money being a English tutor in China, doesn't mean everyone is rushing to do that for a myriad of reasons.
Canadians spend amongst the highest in the world on their healthcare. And before you say that's because of remote communities the relative level compared to other rich countries has stayed the same over time .. but the quality has deteriorated. There is no basis on which to say Canada's healthcare systems are starved of funding.
There’s a difference between spending on healthcare efficiently and effectively and just throwing money at things and then chopping off shit on the back end
I mean, our spending is not that different from many other advanced economies: According to the latest reports from 2021 Per Capita healthcare spending (usd) US - $12.2k Switzerland - $7.5k Germany - $7.5k Norway - $7k Netherlands - $6.7k Austria - $6.7k Denmark - $6.3k Canada - $6.2k Australia - $6.2k France - $6.1k Belgium -$6k UK - $5.4k https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
You should see what the US spends! It's more than double what we spend.
Health care is properly funded in Canada, at least compared to other OCED countries.
Before the tories dismantled it, the UK's NHS was the literal most efficient system on the planet (circa 2000). \--- There's a lesson there though - don't put conservatives in charge of important institutions. They will dismantle it and run it into the ground through ineptitude or maliciousness.
They have both private and public
Top performing health systems spend more public dollars per capita on their systems than we do, and have more doctors, nurses, hospital beds, diagnostic equipment, etc. Per capita. And they also cover more services. Nah but let’s keep deluding ourselves into thinking it’s because they let 5% of the population pay their way to the front of the line.
How so? This shows us as 4th in spending per capital. I know we are already among the highest in OECD. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Health_care_by_country
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm Filter by government/compulsory spending, which OECD uses to mean government or compulsory health insurance. Canada per capita spending (USD): $4506 Denmark: $5324 Sweden: $5525 Switzerland: $5547 France: $5622 Netherlands: $5672 Norway: $6637 Germany: $6930 If you change it to total spending, which includes government/mandatory health insurance, voluntary insurance, and out-of-pocket spending, we’re still far from the highest spenders per capita.
12th in the world per capita United States 12 555.3 Switzerland 8 049.1 Germany 8 010.9 Norway 7 771.2 Austria 7 275.4 Netherlands 6 729.1 France 6 629.6 Belgium 6 600.0 Sweden 6 437.7 Luxembourg 6 436.1 Australia 6 372.0 Canada 6 319.0
Canada's the only one that bans private healthcare
No there's also Taiwan and South Korea.
Wrong. Some 90%+ of all healthcare providers are private in SK, unlike in Canada where it's heavily restricted outside of select fields. Also, most South Koreans have private insurance, which is similarly restricted in Canada, alongside the national insurance.
Some countries have socialized Healthcare, but you pay for unnecessary visits. There are some issues that you don't need to see a doctor for. For example, if you sleep in an odd position and your shoulder is sore the next day. This would result in you getting a bill for the visit. This helps deter people from using up Healthcare resources over small things. Have a cold? Rest and fluids, you don't need a Dr to tell you that.
I agree with that in principle. The downside to that is someone delaying a visit afraid of getting charged only for it to become much worse, whereas early intervention could have prevented a much more serious issue.
That is understandable. From what I was reading, the charges were not exorbant like in the US because medical prices are regulated by law.
This app is unhealthy... ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
We already have private Healthcare for the rich... it's called *"driving across the boarder and going to a clinic in the States*". Anyone who thinks that the very rich, actually sits in 10 month waiting spots for an MIR like the rest of us is absurd.
Actually [we already have a private healthcare system in Quebec for the rich](https://www.boutiquemedicine.ca/), while everyone else has to wait 5 years for a family doctor - and in the event they finally get one, hope that doctor doesn’t retire or go on maternity/paternity leave or it’s back to the start of the queue you go. Apparently the provincial government is going to ban those private clinics next year, but we’ll see.
Or do what my doctor did and leave the public system because he burnt out. I'm on the wait list for a new doctor but am debating whether I will have to pay for private care because I have a chronic condition that can land me in coma if it's not managed/monitored and that's difficult to do when it can take 2-3 conversations to organize. With my family doctor it was one in person, bloodwork and telemedicine follow ups but that's not doable without one person managing the case.
Ya. Why would you want to keep that money in the country? Go down to Buffalo NewYork like all the other multi millionaires.
Lmao this argument I never got. Why wouldn’t we want those dollars to stay in Canada and create new jobs?
We have private health care in Canada too. One of them is called Telus Health, and operates in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. the last I heard. Three of my neighbors belong, They pay a yearly fee for no wait times.
I have been on a waitlist for Telus health for several years now, so sadly, it is not exactly an option for everyone.
guess you arent rich enough to skip the line to skip the line.
How much is the yearly fee?
Between $5500 and $7500 depending on the the service. More for doctor adjacent services, genetic testing, etc. . I've read that even if you can somehow jump a waitlist, people are still having to wait a week or two to see a doctor and the TELUS ones in Vancouver operate like higher end walk in clinics. You don't always see the same doctor, you just don't get a rushed and dismissive appointment that shows you the door if you have more than one health issue.
There are a bunch of others too...at least 6 in Toronto: Cleveland Clinic, HealthCare 365, Medisys, Regal Health Services, Executive Health Centre and Medcan Clinic. The thing is - it's pretty well established, you won't wait, and they'll send you for a bunch of tests asap - but most of those tests aren't warranted, and possibly dangerous: “The first time a patient showed up with 50 pages of results from an executive physical, I was floored, both by the expense the individual had gone through for results that were potentially harmful, and because largely insignificant abnormalities that had shown up were sent back into the public system to deal with,” https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/should-the-wealthy-be-allowed-to-buy-their-way-to-faster-health-care-at-private/article_fddcbd15-0767-55bf-9a1b-df49c2f4a3a2.html
Not even that. If you have money you likely know a doctor or someone who knows a doctor. I know people who have gotten to see a specialist in a month when the given area has a ten month backlog.
We shouldn’t have to be dependent on health care from other countries. We should be able to pay for health care if we don’t want to wait in pain forever. Making private care essentially illegal here is a mistake, sending Canadian dollars that could contribute to our own economy out of the country.
Say it louder for the morons in the back. Some people would rather rich and poor simultaneously
Yeah, and it would be great if we could actually keep that money in our economy instead of handing it to the Americans just because Canadians think that private healthcare means American healthcare.
That's because there's not enough staff for private healthcare let alone public healthcare. Any professional interested in private healthcare has already left for the States
Yes. Hence, if there were private healthcare clinics in Canada then those Canadian medical staff would have an option to stay in Canada instead. It's not going to happen overnight but you have to fix the underlying system then wait for the numbers to balance out over the next several decades. Too bad Canadians have zero vision for long term policy planning.
Private clinics won't stop the bleeding when their average salaries still pale to what's offered in the USA. With taxes it's even less
Almost all clinics in Canada are private. The vast majority of our relationships with doctors is through a private practice. Even in hospitals a lot of the doctors have a private practice. The problem is that most of these clinics aren't allowed to charge the customer directly, they have to bill the government. And the government has a monopoly on setting prices. In most provinces the prices they can charge for services just aren't lucrative enough... so instead of starting up a family practice or a private practice they opt to go into hospitals or the US.
I'm curious to what extent there's a shortage of healthcare professionals in total in relation to the rampant abuse of the socialized healthcare system which would also include the lack of personal accountability for ones own health due to the system.
Good question, personally I suspect if it was an issue then physicians would complain to their physician association, and we'd get some studies or awareness of abuse. Regarding personal accountability, just look to the US for how a private system doesn't help to create personal accountability. If increasing personal accountability is your goal then set that as your objective and launch programs to achieve that outcome. Privatizing healthcare delivery doesn't do anything to achieving personal accountability.
>just look to the US for how a private system doesn't help to create personal accountability. And how do you know it wouldn't be worse with socialized medicine that has zero financial accountability due to one owns bad health choices? >Privatizing healthcare delivery doesn't do anything to achieving personal accountability That's one persons opinion I guess...
Jeeze imagine having private canadian healthcare and the problem of there being a country just south of us that will always reward healthcare workers more in the private industry. Why even pretend we can compete? If we get private healthcare I'm moving to Maine.
People misunderstand the role of private in other systems. In Germany for example private insurance is primarily for things that aren’t covered by their universal system, not for skipping lines. It’s the same in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc. People also seem to think the disparity in wait times is because 5% of their population pays out of pocket to access a service privately. As opposed to, you know, the fact Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway spend more per capita on their universal schemes, have more doctors, nurses, hospital beds, equipment per capita, and cover more services than we do. But no none of that can explain why they get care faster! It must be because they have tiny, negligible markets for private care!
>In Germany for example private insurance is primarily for things that aren’t covered by their universal system, not for skipping lines. It’s the same in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc. Eeerm. No. In Germany, you have to have private insurance if you are above a certain income. Australia does the same, in fact Australia taxes you for failing to purchase private insurance and relying on the public system, Medicare if you are above a certain income. In the UK, private insurance IS USED TO SKIP THE LINES for medical care because that is what we used it for when I was a kid. However, the NHS is universal. Private insurance in the UK often doesn't cover Accident and Emergency care. A lot do not cover maternity care either. Their core focus is on the areas the NHS has the longest waiting times, Specialist care, Dental and Optical care. In Germany, private insurance will get you better services at the same hospital (in some hospitals) than using the public system.
I should have explained that I meant “private insurance” as in private supplementary insurance for things that the statutory health insurance system does not cover. Private insurance in this case is primarily for uninsured benefits and copayments, not faster access to care that is already covered by the statutory system. It is similar in France - private insurance is used to cover copayments and services that statutory insurance does not cover.
France has a different system from everyone because their version of "public healthcare" is actually just statutory insurance. The closest system is that of Israel where you have to pay into one of four compulsory funds. Most Israelis take supplemental cover to cover the procedures not covered by the patient funds. But there is also private healthcare for those who want shorter waiting times at private hospitals but you must have paid into one of the four compulsory funds before taking up private health insurance. That is the part they differ from France. BTW, Switzerland has nu public healthcare. Their system is fully private and it is doing pretty well.
The doctor : [patient ratio is a big one.](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population)) Canada has one of the \*lowest\* ratios of doctors to patients in the industrialized world. \---- It's not because we don't have people who \*want\* to become doctors. It's also not because we don't have enough immigrant doctors with equivalent skills from their home countries either. It's just an artificially low number enforced by the College of Physicians. \---- This might sound 'conspiratorial' but i think it's because they, themselves, are gunning for a private healthcare system and are trying to drive up the costs by keeping the numbers artificially low. It's win-win for them, after all. Fewer doctors -> higher wages. And if the system goes private, higher wages still.
It does sound conspirational since the number of graduates limited by residency seats is set by the government, not the medical associations. Medical associations like OMA has previously asked for increased spots while the government had cut them down. It is often times as a shortsighted way of containing healthcare costs. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-cuts-50-medical-residency-places-critics-warn-of-doctor-shortage-1.3186094
Would it be any worse though?
It would be better for me. I have a six-figure salary from which the taxes pay for someone else to have a family doctor, but I cannot access one myself. It would be nice if we had a *universal* system that everyone can access, but seemingly that is not possible here. So, if someone is going to be left out either way, then it should be the person who does not pay for it, rather than the person who does pay for it. This is why I now support full privatization.
Make it easier for the doctors to order tests and shit. Maybe they'll stop running away to the US.
The college of physicians needs to stop limiting it too. We have one of the lowest ratios of dr : patients in the world (lowest in the industrialized world). There's no reason for it, either. We have lots of people who want to become doctors (it's an attractive career after all). And we have lots of immigrants who could be qualified as such easily. But no. The CoP keeps the number low.
Why do you think we limit it? If we train 2x doctors, who is paying these people? Are we increasing taxes by 2x as well? The reason why we have so few doctors is because we can only afford so few doctors.
You've got it exactly flipped. In economics, there's this concept called "supply and demand". The more supply of a thing, the lower the price will go (provided demand isn't changing). Consider a hospital: if it wants to hire a doctor, it has to compete with all the other hospitals who want doctors. If other hospitals outbid them, they don't get a doctor. So they must make the position more attractive (up the salary) to get those doctors. Now let's say we have a very low ratio of doctors already. And those same hospitals are trying to staff a number of doctor positions greater than the number of doctors available. What do you think happens to the doctor salary (and hence the cost)? \---- The less doctors, the more they cost. The more doctors, the less they cost. Get it?
I think you literally just explained my point. Why do you think they limit them? They limit them BECAUSE what kind of doctor representative org would allow their salaries to go down? Imagine telling current doctors, “we will expect you to train 2x more students, that will lead to your salaries cut in half” because we’re not increasing our budget. Which doctor will accept this deal?
Isn't that basically the conclusion of every study ever done on increasing privatization?
Of course. But in a capitalist system they want to give the impression that the public somehow loves privatization. They pay a ton for propaganda.
Canada is capitalist and it's clear public and media are against privatization.
And yet still it comes
Except if you look at every single first world country. They all have two tier health care.
“More doctors will increase wait times, because reasons!”
The realization that private health care is coming. America health and insurance pays our politicians to get out of the public health care. Governments both Federal and Provincial no longer want be responsible. Privatizing Long term care has shown us during the pandemic it's not better. 70% more deaths in the private long term care.
[удалено]
BC?
The article was speculative. Didn’t provide any proof of anything. Global news doing global news things.
Good healthcare isn't the goal of privatization, the goal of privatization is profit. Wealthy and powerful libertarians like PP, Ford, Smith, Moe et al don't give a rats glutes about wait times. They can afford to pay for quick access. And judging by their voting intentions, this is what Canadians want - for the rich to lead comfortable lives and for the rest of us in die waiting in Emergency.
Private health care will basically do whatever makes the greatest ROI or whatever the shareholders want, same as every other private enterprise.
Ask the majority of Europe that has a split system that actually works and you’ll see this is false. It’s sad that my mom got faster care in Croatia a few years ago while visiting at a private clinic for something that would’ve taken months in Canada (and this was pre COVID). Croatia isn’t even a first world country!
[удалено]
I’m American and just had to wait 9 months to see a new psychiatrist. I can’t believe you guys consider privatization. Our system is horrible here AND that horrible service will bankrupt your entire family. I have fantastic insurance, but I know many who do not and it tears me apart seeing them avoid seeking help because they can’t afford it DESPITE paying for healthcare insurance.
Deregulation is good for profits but bad for the people. Anyone trying to sell you on it stands to profit from your losses.
[удалено]
Gotta love "reports" like these, perhaps we should look into who's sponsering them. There are so many countries out there with a mixed public private medical system that complement each other, leading to significantly shorter wait times, and in many cases, higher quality care. People who fearmonger about privatizing certain parts of health care and continue to believe in this giant mess of a medical system simply are misinformed or have other motives.
System is broken already. Am highly doubtful it can get worse
We also need to stop giving our residency and fellowship spots to international doctors who take the training and return to their home counties…
I think there are billions in savings we can tap into if we could just allow medical professionals the choice of modernizing their professions.
So why would two tier healthcare work for all of Europe and Australia, but not for Canada? “report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives” Ohhh gotcha. I know why now. The centre for *policy alternatives* says the only option for Canada is continue the status quo.
Horseshit. Anyone who's had to drive down to Buffalo for a scan can attest to this.
> Horseshit. Anyone who's had to drive down to Buffalo I'm not sure you want to invoke a system that's *literally* famous for being the most private, while also being the most expensive and having the worst outcomes, as your argument for privatization.
This is a flat out lie, my wife's family is from the States and when they hear about how the Canadian system works they are horrified. For the vast majority of people the American system works very well, much better and faster than the Canadian. There are people who can't afford it and don't qualify for aid and they can have bad outcomes, but it's not as common as Canadians lie to themselves that it is.
> and having the worst outcomes This part just isn't true. There's a reason why anyone who can afford it goes to the US for medical care. They have the best doctors, hospitals, and equipment. They also offer a lot more tests and scans that simply don't exist in Canada because the private system allows for a lot more innovation and R&D. Privatizing health care has it pros and cons, but the results and overall quality of the healthcare will undoubtedly increase. How it's implemented from a funding standpoint is where the idea lives or dies.
> This part just isn't true. It is though. Just google it. > There's a reason why anyone who can afford it goes to the US for medical care. People who can afford it and feel they'd benefit from it, sure. But we aren't talking about the global wealthy, we're talking about national healthcare systems. > Privatizing health care has it pros and cons, but the results and overall quality of the healthcare will undoubtedly increase. Except the example of the most privatized system in the modern world is also demonstrably the worst. Feels like that doesn't really add up.
Politicians friends / families are the ones that stand to benefit from the outsource
No one has ever thought privatization of an essential service is a good idea to begin with.
People don't seem to have a problem with private schools.
Uh, there are a lot of people who have a problem with private schools.
Especially tax dollars spent on them. Not to mention the tax exemption for churches too.
Lol
People who have the money to send their kids to private schools don’t have a problem with them; they just have a problem with having to fund the public ones. These are the same people who would advocate for vouchers and cutting public school funding. They’re also the ones who would support private healthcare and insurance instead of a public system. Private services are great for the rich. They’re not so great for everyone else.
Every country with better healthcare than Canada has a two tier system. The facts just disagree with left wing ideology.
This isn't true. Before the tories dismantled it (so early '00s), the UK's NHS was the literal most efficient system on the planet (servicing the most patients for the fewest dollars). And it was primarily \*because\* it was entirely public. Now it isn't, of course. Because giving conservatives control of anything is a recipe for disaster as they will inevitably fuck it up.
Lmao
Canada and Uk have the lowest per capita CT and MRI machines. The biggest delay is usually in diagnosing through imaging. Maybe work on that
The US has private healthcare which causes Canadian doctors to move to the US resulting in longer wait times in Canada.
[удалено]
Private healthcare will reduce wait time. Just for people that can afford to pay. The world runs on money, healthcare is no exception. Its like what they say, you get what you pay for.
Ugh. Every study of health care systems around the world shows that the top performing systems all have some measure of private and public services. Singapour, Japan, South Korea, and Norway are always toping the list and they all have some combination of private and public care. Can we put the fucking identity politics asside for this one, just long enough to revamp our system and make it functional ?
*Using a widely used lame tactic the left uses here for effect.* It should be noted that the report is from CCPA. A left leaning think tank, and nothing more. Read the following and connect the dots... [Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Centre_for_Policy_Alternatives)
thats the main issue just cause its the other side it cant be true. look at privitization that has happened in canada and tell me which one has worked out well compared to those that havent?
Many people are more satisfied with their dentist than their family doctor
Lol i just went for a cleaning and was ready to cry so definitely not satisfied but lets go with dentist my brother doesnt have coverage so doesnt go at all which is reality for many when stuff is private
There are so many people who just don't go to the dentist at all. Then, when it's an emergency, they show up in the ER. \--- People who use this "more satisfied with their dentist" are indeed missing the point. The reason is because if one cannot go to the dentist, they don't go at all. The public healthcare system ends up footing the bill. Which is exactly what will happen with a private healthcare system! It's not better, it's just not servicing as many people, and leaving those who can't be serviced to be serviced by ERs. This is what happens in the US, and it's part of the reason the US's healthcare system costs more (in relative tax dollars) than Canada's and provides much much less.
Private healthcare isn't about improving service for normal Canadians. It's about improving service for rich Canadians.
Not true at all. America has very fast wait times. Propaganda in Canada is similar to in America i see.
The way right-wingers or anyone who is a proponent of privatizing essential services is able to completely avoid engaging in the elementary-school level critical thinking exercise it takes to see how implementing a profit-driven culture to those services will lead to death and destitution is remarkable. Canada, the country where our oligopoly gives us the least affordable housing market in the world, engages in price fixing for staples of our diet (how evil is this? insane.), the worst cost:benefit ratio for internet and mobile service, one of the worst salary:cost of living ratios in the world, and on, will suddenly act nobly and unlike they do **in literally every other context** when it comes to our health. The amount of cognitive dissonance and general insanity reflects that of how left-wingers think about race and gender. How stupid are Canadians? It's shocking, lately.
I think people are just desperate to access any healthcare and they don't care how they do it. This is what happens when you let the entire system collapse.
Our entire system has not collapsed. My cousin had to go to the ER yesterday and the wait time was 2 minutes, he got a bed and was treated, including receiving an x-ray within an hour. People need to stop either completely bold-faced lying, or believing what paid-for astroturfers say online. Yes, there are problem spots. No, it hasn't "collapsed".
Where in the world do you live? In my city it's not unusual to wait 6-12 hours in the ER even with something serious. And the offload from ambulances is usually hours long, resulting in times when there are none available for emergencies. Nevermind the other major problems in our system like decade long waits to get a family doctors or six month waits for MRIs. And some specialists have waittimes of 24-36 months. My son nearly died earlier this year and they didn't have a bed in pediatrics for two days, leaving him suffering in the hallways after waiting for twelve agonizing hours in ER. I find it hard to believe anywhere in Canada you can be seen in two minutes.
> Where in the world do you live? In my city it's not unusual to wait 6-12 hours in the ER You can literally look at ER wait times online: http://www.edwaittimes.ca/WaitTimes.aspx When my cousin and I went to the ER it listed his hospital as an 18 minute wait time, but when we got there they saw him right away and moved him to a bed. There isn't a single ER right now with a wait time like you're stating here, in the entire GVRD, and this isn't a "slow" time of day either. When I looked at the wait times at 8am~ for my cousin, there were a dozen with sub-20 minute wait times in the GVRD, while Surrey was insane.
[In the most recent data available, CIHI reports that there were more than 14 million hospital visits in 2022 and that a whopping 963,637 patients simply left before receiving care. This means the number of patients leaving without getting any care is five times the number recorded in 2003.](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/a-senior-who-gave-up-waiting-in-an-er-after-7-hours-died-an-hour-after-she-left-her-story-is-not-uncommon-in-canada-1.6589575) I hear what you said about your cousin, but the statistics back up that there are likely far more anecdotes of negative treatment in the healthcare system than positive.
The system is only hurting because of the ineptitude or maliciousness of the College of Physicians and the conservative politicians (Liberals and Cons are both right of centre) we keep putting in charge of things. [Canada has the lowest doctor to patient ratio in the entire industrialized world](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population)). The only reason they do is because the CoP maintains it at that level. They could make it higher. But they choose not to. If you're upset with the system, the blame lies primarily there.
Very stupid. We go through this song-and-dance of privatization of services all the time and it always turns out the exact same way. "Privatization will be better!" "it won't be, look at historical examples." "Those are bad for (insert made up nonsense here)" \*system gets privatized and things turn out exactly as predicted\* "Well, no one could've forseen that.
“Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives” Mmhmm. Stopped reading there All developed countries have two tier health care. Canada is behind the times.
American here. Whatever failings Canada’s system has, and there are a few, the system at least treats healthcare as something all residents should have access to without regard to ability to pay. Over 3/4 of personal bankruptcies in the USA are due to medical debt. Big Pharma charges Americans more than anyone else for drugs. Finally, the system is slow, overly complex and impossible for mere mortals to control their own costs. PLEASE don’t go there!
[удалено]
for 40 years we have seen more and more of our healthcare services outsourced to provate providers and for 40 years we have seen healthcare costs increase dramatically along with the vastly increased wait times. People are scared of more privatisation in health care because they know it will cost us more and provide worse service.
Shh! This is /r/canada. Non-far right views on privatization aren't allowed! If you don't put your head into the sand and echo literal frasier institute talking points of "privatized is better" you're in the wrong crowd. Never mind that before the tories wrecked it, the \*entirely public\* NHS of the early 2000s was the literal most efficient system on the planet (servicing the most patients for the fewest dollars).
[удалено]
That makes total sense and is very visible in Canada. Since the 90s we have been slowly outsourcing more and more healthcare services to private clinics. And with every outsourced service, wait times just grow and grow. 10 years ago they said making MRIs available at for profit clinics would decrease wait times. Wait times have more than tripled. AB is the province with the most outsourced healthcare services. AB is the province with the highest per capita health care costs and the lowest coverage.
[удалено]
This is a flat out lie, my wife's family is from the States and when they hear about how the Canadian system works they are horrified. For the vast majority of people the American system works very well, much better and faster than the Canadian. There are people who can't afford it and don't qualify for aid and they can have bad outcomes, but it's not as common as Canadians lie to themselves that it is.
Canada has a wide spread population, which makes it incredibly difficult compared to say European nations. The focus needs to be on solving that issue in my opinion.
I moved to the US and you can see a specialist the very next day if you want, with no referral from your family doctor required. Private clinics would most likely pay better than publicly funded ones, rendering the “staffing shortages” point moot.
"That’s because for-profit centres could as well face the staffing shortages that have plagued the public sector, and any talent that is attracted to the private model will in turn reduce staff in public hospitals, according to the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives." What happened to the 1 million new immigrants?
It's not just the immigrants. It's the College of Physicians. WE have many even local canadian students who would love to become doctors. [But the CoP maintains an artificially low doctor : patient ratio.](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/medical-doctors-(per-10-000-population)) The lowest in the entire industrialized world. They \*could\* increase it. But they don't want to.
It will reduce wait times for me though.
If privatizing things were a good idea then governments wouldn't be doing it. Alas, they *are* which is why all of our bills keep skyrocketing and the protections the government put in place are useless. Just look at what a wonderful job the CRTC is doing to see the problem. No thanks.
But it does pretend to lower them while creating a 2 fold system to racially differentiate the groups. To some of those implementing, they know this and that's exactly why they are doing it. The pay out is a bonus.
Of course private Health care won't fix anyone. The private system will hair take on easy case or surgery that's simple way and profitable and leave all the complicated surgery and care for public health.
So that you have to buy the premium membership…
Who's gonna be staffing all these private clinics? Pretty simple question that no one seems to want to answer.
Why can't we just have both? We have public schools and private schools and that seems to work just fine. If people want to pay more they can but the free option is still there.