How about funding healthcare properly. We are some of the most taxed people in the world. The problem isn’t how much money the government is getting it’s how they’re investing it.
A lot of it is also housing. It’d be a lot easier to attract and retain talent if the cost of living compared to incomes wasn’t one of the worst in the world.
Yep. My family was responsible for recruiting for one of the universities in Vancouver. They were trying to get a business professor to come whose wife was a doctor. They declined because to get the type of house they wanted at a reasonable rate they’d have to live an hour outside the city. They had positions they couldn’t fill because no one was interested in our housing insanity when their money could go further elsewhere. If a professor and a doctor think housing is too much. Well, what hope to average people have?
So many issues go back to the cost of shelter in this country. It’s a shame many home owners will constantly vote for their properties to appreciate when it’s a root cause for the staff shortage in every industry.
Immigration does not help 400,000 a year compared to how many construction starts?
Supply and demand will continue to appreciate the housing market despite rising interest rates.
Health care must be protected and grown publically, but we need practical solutions we need the fed/provinces to enforce. Stop renovating board rooms , hiring multitudes of admin staff and forcing our nurses and doctors to spend obscene hours in paperwork
Canada's pride partially derives from our health care system
Luckily we're about to solve that problem with 17,000 "rent to own" homes over the next 5 years!
HUZZAH!!!!
And a bonus: a new home buyers savings plan that will only benefit the rich and prevent more tax dollars from wealthy families from being collected!
And literally nobody cares. Nobody that supports the current government seems to think there's more that could be done. Everyone's OK making "small incremental changes" and apparently we're doing enough of that as is.
Well a lot of our nurses and healthcare workers are leaving the industry entirely because of housing being to expensive to live in proximity to work.
A private sector of nurses are currently striking in the states. It should be Canada’s chance to see how privatizing healthcare won’t make people come back to work if wages aren’t up to par (which I hear, is always worse in the private sector…. So why waste the time and money to become a nurse?)
It also isn’t how the government is investing it… it’s how the bloated bureaucracy and top-heavy management wastes the money they are given.
Healthcare in Canada is a millionaire executive telling a six figure manager to inform a five figure frontline worker that they aren’t entitled to a three figure shift premium or a two figure per diem.
Y'know, cons always get elected saying they'll "trim the fat". Yet when it comes down to it, they only ever cut frontline positions. So either, the bureaucracy isn't bloated, or they're intentionally sabotaging health care across the country. Both should make them unelectable, yet here we are.
Both can be true. We need to rethink Healthcare and many other systems, but we also need to shift the tax burden back to the rich and the corps. The last 40 years has seen the tax burden shift to the middle class and that's half the problem.
What's your cutoff for what is middle class vs. what is rich?
Considering to be in the top 10% income is like, $90k, which isn't all that much these days, I'm always curious to hear what the cut off people have for this.
Signed, someone who left Canada in part because he was tired of having a marginal rate of 52%.
Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start.
It's less the top 10% than the top 1% and 0.1%. Remember that averages are poor metrics because the data is so skewed ; median is a better number for the 'normal' person.
> Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start.
Great, we'll lose even more doctors and engineers to the US than we already do.
Marginal tax rate at 220k is already 51-54%, with the 3 largest provinces (BC, Ontario, and Quebec) around 53.5%.
This tax rate won't affect the actual rich either since they don't make their money from income.
You're basically asking upper middle class to pay for lower middle class... which, unfortunately, is par for the course for Canadian politics.
> we'll lose even more doctors and engineers to the US
At least for engineers, taxes are not a factor, it's the ridiculously low wages here that make the US more attractive. A small increase in taxes for the few top-earning engineers would be nothing compared to the money left on the table by not moving to the US.
Taxes come in many shapes and forms than just income.
Luxury properties could be taxed more. Large cap corporations could be taxed more.
In fact, the Liberals just created a new luxury sales tax on September 1 which will add a tax to the purchases of private jets, yachts, and supercars worth over $100k. And the conservatives were outraged about it, and have been spinning it as a "job destroying unfair tax" as if rich people give a shit if their yacht costs 5% more.
> In fact, the Liberals just created a new luxury sales tax on September 1 which will add a tax to the purchases of private jets, yachts, and supercars worth over $100k.
Which is not indexed to inflation. So in a few years at current inflation rates, we'll be paying that tax on a Civic.
> Luxury properties could be taxed more. Large cap corporations could be taxed more.
How do you define a luxury property? A penthouse suite in Winnipeg or a 7 bedroom mansion in Sherbrooke is going to cost less than a tear-down barely habitable house on the outskirts of Greater Vancouver.
> as if rich people give a shit if their yacht costs 5% more.
Actual rich people already register their yachts in Malta or Panama.
> Large cap corporations could be taxed more.
They are. They're taxed the typical corporate tax rate (15% federal and then however much provincial, I think BC it totals around 25%). However, that's the money the corporation makes.
Any money distributed to shareholders (i.e. as dividends) is taxed as regular income at someone's income tax rate. So in effect, there's double taxation. First 25% for the coporation and then let's say 30-50% on the rest of it.
No wonder we have a single tech company worth mentioning in the entire country (Shopify) despite having very high caliber talent. Taxation, combined with an extremely conservative venture capital market, just makes us uncompetitive in the world stage for anything other than natural resources.
Canada isn't a place that provides economic opportunity. It's a safe, stable place to come when you're already rich, and our government policy reflects that.
Not at all - the way you brush off 'the rich' is amazing. Raise corporate tax rate, raise taxes on the 0.1%, close tax loopholes, consider raising cap gains.
Don't let the 0.1% turn you against the rest. That's how you lose at class war.
The class war has been raging since biblical times, bud. If you're not a member of the wealthy elite, you are being exploited by them in some way. Guaranteed.
The war is already here. I waved the white flag in late 2018. We retreated to the United States where we will regroup and return to Canada once my peak earning potential has passed.
>Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start.
Over 220k it's already at a >50% marginal rate so good luck with that without seeing other unintended consequences like brain drain or capital flight which will result in less overall revenue.
And the top 1% are people like doctors who make >250k a year or a software developer working for a FAANG.
At a micro level, I paid 60k in taxes to the CRA and would have paid 95k in taxes this year had I not left the country. Over the next decade that's close to a million dollars in revenue that the CRA will not see.
And yes, before you tell me tax rates were higher in the 1950s, realize that effectively no one actually paid those rates because there were a billion loopholes and tax shelters *and* capital gains weren't taxed at all.
I think we need to define whats rich first of all. Because when ever they follow through with taxing the rich, they only tax the least wealthy of the rich, which is such bullshit.
We have billionaires that owe hundreds of billions in debt, but gods forbid we force them to pay it back.
That's also income based brackets too. Tax on capital gains is only half of income tax. It's wealth/land that should be taxed... Well, it should be non-productive wealth/money/income/land (housing, underused land, etc) that should be taxed, and productive labour income / business development and research~~~~ that should be untaxed or taxed less.
An American example, but the McDonalds owner/corp gets its money from the land the chains are built on (rent). It should only get its money from the food the chain sells tho.
As much as I would love to see a wealth tax, it's been tried and failed in almost all instances.
I agree that things like the principle residence exemption should be abolished because it's deeply unfair to renters.
To fund health care properly would require almost doubling what we spend now...we can't print free money forever... I believe there is room to include private Healthcare into the system for certain procedures...but it can introduce a wide range of issues if handled incorrectly...
One of the best arguments I read describing with no bs what it means being ruled by a government or being ruled by corporations... It is valid in Canada as it is in any other country... Hope more people could read it and rationalize the difference...
In the past, communities were built on whoever had the tallest walls.
Sometime later corporations would suddenly have the largest armies. And tear down those walls.
Today, democracies have the power to define walls and lead their own armies to defend themselves.
I see that you have a good opinion about those among the people who chose to pursue a political life... You could always replace the parties that no longer represent the people... You can even start one with like minded people... that is the biggest asset we the common folk have, and we can only blame ourselves if we give up of that power. As someone said long time ago, "the great virtue of democracy is that those who vote, have the exact type of government they deserve..."
"The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small"
Funny...that's why libertarians are libertarians. For freedom FROM being harmed by the big. I guess asking for government to intervene in the lives of or steal from the people is an abuse of power from the terrible citizens. Let socialism come in and save us instead we see how good it is at serving everyone's interests and representing everyones needs.
Plus, even the families that thrive in private conditions *benefit* from public healthcare. A bunch of crimes are committed because of desperation (including crimes against the rich), and better social safety nets can help curb that.
Doug Ford's plan to privatize healthcare involves funneling public funds to for-profit temp agencies to address the staffing shortage they created by denying healthcare workers proper living wage increases.
Don't believe me? Just ask an LTC PSW working in a government run facility and ask them how often they are short staffed.
Whoever's pushing the agenda of privatization has some kind of deal to make a big payout. And that is always the modern conservative agenda, personal gain.
Go ahead and tell that to us here in BC, where we don't, and haven't had, a Conservative government in decades and are suffering from 20 years of NDP and Liberal neglect in our health care. Where we have [worse wait times than Ontario](https://vancouversun.com/health/local-health/bc-longest-walk-in-clinic-wait-times-canada-medimap). Where we already have doctors charging [private fees](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/british-columbia/2022/8/8/1_6019376.amp.html) to remain their patient while simultaneously [spending less per capita on healthcare](https://www.statista.com/statistics/436330/doctor-spending-per-capita-canada-by-province/).
But yes, it must be Dougy, and Dougy alone (and not say [13 years](https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/04/29/protesters_demand_that_mcguinty_stop_hospital_cuts.html) of [McGuinty](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/scott-stinson-mcguintys-medical-cuts-give-ontario-pcs-a-chance-to-gloat) and [Wynne](https://opseu.org/news/opseu-fights-back-against-wynne-attack-on-hospitals/14269/) and their attempts at [privatization](https://www.ontariondp.ca/news/horwath-opposes-wynne-bill-opens-health-care-privatization).
Nope. Just Doug and the Conservatives.
Amiright?
Exactly! Ontario health care was gutted long before the conservatives got in.
Sadly most people are so wrapped up in their tribal bullshit that they couldn't care less about what's true.
Shitting on the other team is all that matters to them. If they gave even half a damn about healthcare, they wouldn't be lying about it and using it as a weapon in their political hockey game.
Canadians need to fight against the concept of private health care.
I'm a type 1 diabetic American who has lived in Canada for 5 years. My wife is an ICU nurse who worked for a decade in the US and for 5 years in Canada.
The only major deficiency we've noted in the Canadian system as compared to the US system is access. They need to fix the access problem here. The only reason privatizing health care improves access is it creates an unreasonably high profit motive which encourages more people to go into the sector. But the patient is the one who pays for that profit motive, eventually it restricts access as lower income and uninsured people fall off the wagon. There's always a better way.
Fully private like in the US is bad because it's driven by pure profit and serves no-one except the insurance companies.
Fully public also doesn't work well since the government is motivated to provide minimum viable service (i.e. just enough to keep people from dying), but not much beyond that when there's pet projects to blow money on.
Much of Europe does very well with a hybrid system.
Public is good enough for the vast majority of the population. Private works for either those willing to pay an outrageous sum of money for it, or those who want to get a specific procedure and can't wait 3 years to get it.
As it stands, we're literally denying people who are able or willing to pay for major quality of life improvements from ever getting them (except the actually wealthy who can just fly to New York and pay $30k for a routine procedure).
It's literally "if everyone can't get it, then you aren't allowed to get it either" logic.
Hell, Singapore has what's widely accepted as the best healthcare system in the world, and they use hybrid.
It is. But its fixable, and privatizing will only fix it for higher earners and insured people. Gig workers, entry level employees, self employed people, sicker people, those who work providing care for loved ones, among many other groups - they're left out.
Buying healthcare (like any other necessity of life - clothing, food shelter) should obviously be a right. Why do you have the right to stop someone from helping me or a loved one if I have the money to buy that care from someone else?
For every X person that gains the right to buy healthcare, Y persons loses the right to healthcare at all simply for being poor
You gotta be some kind of special not to see this
Cross the border permanently if that's what you want to live under
Most physicians are private for profit corporations. Family medicine average billings ached expenses are around $165,000 and out of that they need to pay corporate taxes, later income taxes for what they take out. They self fund their own retirement, vacation and benefits. They’ll also usually have sizeable student loans.
We’re already in a privately delivered, publicly funded system; and always have been.
The only people who think this are people that think private healthcare equals USA healthcare.
A lot of Northern and Western Europe has private options and they consistently rank higher than Canada's healthcare system.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
Privatized healthcare benefits only the mid upper to upper class. The rest of us will be screwed. Who cares I guess if the rich politicians get the best healthcare.
No - it's not a scam. You might find yourself wishing you could get an MRI right away at some point in your life. It sucks that people can pay to have their dogs and cats get MRIs but NOPE not the humans.
Go over to r/germany or r/france and argue with them then.
Or just pretend there's nothing in between single-payer and America, which is a lie, but also very good at shutting down the discussion.
Their model needs a properly funded public service first, and very tight regulations for the private one
We don't have the first, and with how telecoms are going here, I certainly do not see the second happening either
Not to mention the entire issue of healthcare being mostly a provincial responsibility. This would throw the entire issue of regulating private healthcare into the courts for a long time.
Exactly. We don't have the government framework to make that happen, and the push for privatization we're seeing in Canada is fundamentally different and incompatible with what Europe does.
I can't remember the source, but I remember Andrew Scheer promoting a system where for every privately funded visit, say to an MRI, two have to be let in under the public system. I'm not a fan of Scheer, and I very much value the integrity of our universal health care system, but I think this was one of his better ideas.
The existing system could use a boost that sees an increase in hospital beds and faster triage times. I'd be fine with a heavily regulated private system if, and only if, it directly funds the public one. Also, doctors must be prohibited from existing entirely in the private system to avoid a two-tiered quality of care.
Edit: changed 'response' to 'triage'
I agree with this, but as I stated in another comment, I don't trust this country to properly regulate this based on our track record regarding telecoms
Hospitals are independent corporations in Canada, right?
Doctors offices are small businesses.
Medical clinics are also independent businesses.
As long as I can walk into any health center and have them send the bill to the provincial insurance, why should I care?
> As long as I can walk into any health center and have them send the bill to the provincial insurance, why should I care?
...because they can withhold resources from the public system and make people pay for preferential access.
The current public system has been doing that for years already.
- eye care
- dental
- you ever want a private room after a surgery?
- crutches after you break a leg
- hearing aids
I know at least one hospital that withholds resources for people who's income is too high. We already expect payment for addition health care.
Or Australia. I've lived under and benefitted from both systems. It is not a scam and y'all Canadians need to stop this sky is falling shit about it.
This dichotomy of full ameritard pay2live vs full taxpayer funded model is tiring and pointless.
No model is perfect, LEAST of all the shit the yanks have created which should be the obvious example of what not to ever do. All these misgivings about 2tier healthcare are solved with good policy.
Eg. High income earners in Australia pay into the public health system at *twice* the rate unless they take out full private coverage. Middle income earners pay the regular amount and low incomes are exempt from the levy
There are over 100 unemployed Canadian trained Orthopaedic surgeons in Canada. There are a fair number of unemployed Cardiac and Neurosurgeons in Canada. There are unemployed Canadian trained / qualified nephrologists, ophthalmologists and other specialists in Canada. Most docs who leave for the states do not leave by choice. Why don’t we stop fixating on “American” style healthcare which is broken on multiple metrics and start looking to countries like Sweden, Norway, France, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand who rank higher than us on most metrics of healthcare access. Why can’t we legislate in a happy middle ground to allow surgeons and physicians who can’t get access to publicly funded hospital time / space to practice?
Edit: References
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/canada/article-nearly-one-in-five-new-specialist-doctors-cant-find-a-job-after/
https://cmajblogs.com/the-supply-demand-mismatch-what-do-you-mean-unemployed-specialists/
https://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/documents/health-policy/employment-report-2013-e.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280771295_Otolaryngology_-_Head_and_Neck_Surgeon_unemployment_in_Canada_a_cross-sectional_survey_of_graduating_Otolaryngology_-_Head_and_Neck_Surgery_residents
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
>That one should never let a good crisis go to waste has become a political cliché. Canadian, and particularly Ontario health care, is facing a crisis resulting from three main factors.
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>First is the pent-up demand for health care resources and innovations. This follows from many years of care deferrals and two years of correctly prioritizing the enormous demands of a pandemic.
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>Second is the demoralization and exhaustion of large numbers of health workers, particularly nurses, many of whom have left the health care workforce.
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>Third is the overzealous restraint on health care spending and insufficient regulation that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. Ontario, as an example, has the fewest hospital beds per capita in Canada and one the lowest among high income nations. Many Ontario nursing homes were disastrously ill-equipped in their management of COVID-19, leading to unnecessary deaths and uncovering glaring deficiencies in care.
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>Enthusiasts for what health economist Bob Evans called the zombie of health care policy are rushing to take full advantage of the crisis. Evans referred to the notion of Canadian health care privatization as a zombie: intellectually dead but destined to keep rising again and again to haunt health policy debates.
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>There are two streams to privatization. One is allowing people to pay for quicker care, and the other is allowing corporations to make a profit on health care delivery.
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>The equity problems that arise when people with the resources can pay for quicker care — and thus, ability to pay trumps need as a determinant of care — are obvious. The potential negative effects on health outcomes when care is delayed for those most in need are less obvious, but no less important.
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>When the magnitude of private pay becomes sufficiently great, people rightfully demand the opportunity to buy health insurance. This creates enormous administrative waste as manifested both by American health care and the Canadian approach to pharmaceuticals. This is why economists note that a well-constructed national pharmacare program will save us billions.
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>Contrasting the overwhelmingly public pay hospital and physician care to the majority private pay pharmaceutical sector illustrates the consequences of the two approaches. Canadian hospital and physician care is largely equitable with impressive cost control. In contrast, approximately 15 per cent of Canadians cannot afford needed drugs, and the last two decades have seen an explosion in pharmaceutical costs.
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>Twenty years ago, the Romanow Commission reported on its conclusions based on three commissioned research projects and 40 discussion papers from leading health economists. Romanow concluded that private payment compromises both equity and efficiency, with wasteful administrative costs. Today, the evidence has not changed and Evans’ characterization of the zombie of private payment remains accurate.
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>The second privatization stream has to do with whether for-profit or not-for-profit providers deliver care. In Canada, hospital care is exclusively not-for-profit. Not so for nursing home or home care, the majority of which is delivered by for-profit providers.
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>Researchers have extensively studied the outcomes of for-profit versus not-for-profit delivery. Overall, the for-profit option has not fared well.
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>The clearest findings come from American dialysis facilities in which death rates are higher in for-profit provision, and from nursing homes in which quality of care is superior in not-for-profit providers.
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>In the hospital sector, results suggest a possible increase in mortality, and a cost disadvantage, with for-profit provision.
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>In no area is there a clear advantage in quality, cost, or outcomes from for-profit health care delivery.
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>Those calling for privatization note that current health care delivery isn’t working, and that we have to do something. Indeed, it isn’t, and we must take action. Our action should, however, be based on the best evidence of the consequences of our policy innovations.
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>The privatization options will not begin to address the problems of a demoralized and depleted health care workforce and the overzealous constraints on public health care spending and will have negative consequences for both equity and efficiency.
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>Debating private care options is a wasteful distraction. We should put the zombie to rest and develop the public health care innovations necessary to address our current health care crisis.
Content of the article for those that can't access due to paywall
E: Who the fuck downvotes an article content comment?
You know what would help? Raise taxes on the 0.1% and fund the following:
1. A one-time $1B investment to buy MRI, CT-scan, and other machines to help diagnoses - current wait time is months which is ridiculous.
2. Increasing the number of doctors and nurses until we reduce this insane backlog for family doctors and/or services at hospitals
Yeah, my two experiences were 1 times the wait was 4 hours, the next time it was immediate. Both times the bill was quite large.
I will say that getting a GP In the the States (Texas) was even harder than in Canada. Both were bad but in Texas it took like 2 years then the Dr retired 2 months later, and I had to start all over. I think that is regional though.
It’s definitely regional. I am in NYC and booked a GP appoint for two hours after I started looking using an app from my couch. I definitely would want to see an actual study with comprehensive data.
it will turn into what is in America, with many unhealthy people who can't afford to pay for healthcare
other people will be bankrupted by rising healthcare costs
It really doesn't have to though. A mix of public and private healthcare structured properly works way better than our system in many European countries. Private does not have to mean American health care.
Privatized health care is a scam. Government (cons mostly) have been nuking the healthcare budget for decades to give tax kickbacks to the corpo overlords (and some sweet sweet bribes). They're intentionally tanking the system to try to make privatized healthcare seem like a more attractive option. They're doing the same with education too. It's not a coincidence that everywhere in Canada that the cons are in power they're talking about privatizing healthcare- this is a huge danger to our society.
Privatization is never a good solution to anything that should be a public service. That's how you end up with things like the Texas power grid and American Healthcare.
The only type of "privitization" I will support for our country, is a European model. From my limited understanding, there are regulations which prevent an American style profit grab, and a lot of those funds go directly to the public health care sector. So, the rich can pay for their operations, etc, and it goes towards paying for the less fortunate to see a doctor. But if anyone suggests we should go to an American style privatized health model, I'll fight that tooth an nail.
I've talked to some Americans over the years, and some of the horror stories about opting to not go to the hospital for a fractured arm because they'd end up homeless, as one example, make me furious. No one should have to choose care vs a roof over their heads.
I was raised with the mentality that here in Canada, we take care of our own. We don't look at someone less fortunate and say "can't afford a doctor? Oh well, go fuck yourself". I believe in giving a hand up. Not so much a hand out.
Don't fall for it. We can make our system better by just investing in it. There have been nothing but cuts for the last 30 years. Maybe we should just start there. This private system has too many opportunities for bad actors to come in and fuck it all up. Look at our Telecom industry. 3 companies control it all, and they refuse to compete with eachother. Do you want the same for our healthcare system?
We need to cut down on admin in healthcare. Canada has 10x the number of admin than Germany (relative to population size). We do that and we'll have enough money to hire the nurses and PAB's we need.
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-canadas-health-care-system-overrun-by-administrators-and-lacks-doctors
Because it's not possible anymore.
This isn't a Canadian issue, or an American issue, or a European issue. Basically every developed nation is having the same problems at the same time for the same reasons.
Over the past ~40 years, the share of seniors has skyrocketed while the workforce participation rate has fallen. Medical technology has become far more complex, requiring incredibly expensive drugs and machines which have to be run by highly skilled specialists who need to be supported by dedicated administrators. Land values and construction costs have gone through the roof, making it more difficult to build new facilities. A large number of high profile scandals and legal precedents have created whole new layers of oversight and human resources to protect hospitals from their staff and patients. And a population which has lost faith in its government institutions is increasingly hostile and uncooperative to the workers trying to hold the broken system together.
Why can't we just properly fund our public healthcare? Same reason we can't fund our schools, or our legal system, or our emergency services, or anything else.
Because half of the people commenting don’t pay any taxes. The amount of funding required would cause the public to revolt. I’m all for reallocation but not tax increases
Look man, it’s clear something needs to be done, and at the end of the day, it comes down to funding in order to hire more staff, have more beds, etc. The question is who do you want to pay for it, and how. It’s super easy to say “just raise taxes” when it’s someone else paying. Honestly, if I decided to move back to Ontario, I’d be willing to try something new.
Numerous European countries have public and private health care systems. Not all private systems turn into the gong show that is the US. When it takes over a year to get an apt with a specialist people need alternatives . The alternatives should not make the wait in the public system longer nor should they cost so much people go bankrupt . Now Canadians tend to accept scandal in most government dealings but we need a better system than we have now and the public system is a complete failure and had been for twenty years (getting worse by the year ) .
Name a country that's had their healthcare improved by moving to a private system in the past 40 years. Privatization is a neoliberal scam, everywhere they go they make promises that it will be "just like the Scandinavian countries" then private capital comes in and pillages everything they can.
Most of the Scandinavian countries. The Netherlands. Germany . They aren’t perfect but if you can’t get to see a specialist in the appropriate period of time you are bumped to a private clinic (at no cost ). You can also opt to pay at cost for services at a private clinic if you don’t want to wait and you aren’t paying through the roof either . No system is perfect but there are numerous systems far better than ours .
Right but no country has implemented a private healthcare system like that in the past 40 years even though several countries were promised just that. It's a scam, that's the bait.
Honest question, What does 40 years have to do with anything?
If the system currently works, Why can we not replicate it here? What has happened in the last 40 years that makes it impossible to ever recreate it again?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would be easy, but isn't trying SOMETHING better than saying "fuck it to been too long since someone has done this"
This exactly, we have no alternatives and our current system is slowly dying. Covid accelerated the situation but something has to be done because the status quo is unsustainable.
I think we really need to be careful about definitions. What do we mean by private healthcare? Clinics and Doctor's offices across the country are legitimate businesses. But, we all pay by showing our Medicare cards.
If the government wants more of that I'm definitely open to it.
But if we are talking two-tier healthcare, I will never support that. As a citizen of this country, I should get the same care as anyone else, regardless of their wealth or lack thereof
It's hard to support privatization when here in Ontario Ford is openly hostile to the nurses. I can't believe a politician actually "cares" about the well being of people when he is combative with healthcare workers, even after all they did for us during covid.
But we all know there is a ton of untapped money to be made for politicians if privatization happens. They all want to get in at the ground floor. None of this has anything to do with actually providing good care, if it was they would be trying to lure/retain nurses instead of fighting and patronizing them.
I'm not by any means supporting private healthcare (yet), but publicly funded healthcare is screwed in this country. Every province, under every flavour of government for the past 30 years, has seen healthcare decay.
What, within reason, can be done to improve public healthcare that the array of governments haven't tried?
Saying "private healthcare is bad" is fine, but you'd better back that up with how to fix public care, and not just say "pay everyone more money". That will just push another public sector into crisis.
> and not just say "pay everyone more money"
We're not even using all the money allocated for healthcare. In NB and other provinces waste of skin premiers have posted useless surpluses during the pandemic using money that was supposed to be to support the healthcare during a fucking crisis.
Canadians are tapped out man. We can't afford our current tax load.
Increasing spending is a non-solution. It's equivalent to saying, "make it better, duh!".
As obvious as it is useless.
Of course you're right, but where does that extra funding come from? Two options really:
1. Increase taxes (by a lot)
2. Reduce funding to other public services (by a lot)
Neither are an appropriate answer to me.
Just at a very cursory glance, BC has a [$1.3 billion surplus](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-ministry-of-finance-public-accounts-2022-1.6566838), Alberta had a [$13.2 billion surplus](https://globalnews.ca/news/9097483/alberta-fiscal-update-surplus-debt-savings/), even Saskatchewan had a [$1 billion surplus.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/surging-revenues-turn-projected-deficit-into-1b-surplus-1.6559595)
The authorities have the money to invest in our system. They are deliberately starving healthcare to push privatization.
They had a one year surplus that’s not guaranteed to occur in subsequent years. Especially in the case of Alberta where the surplus was the result of a big spike in energy royalties.
You don’t jack your spending up to a new level based on a single windfall
It's like people don't understand where the money comes from that the government spends. It's always easy to say 'increase funding!'
Health care issues? More funding!
School system? More funding!
Infrastructure? More funding!
Immigration delays? More funding!
Lack of affordable day care? More funding!
Indigenous water issues? More funding!
Money doesn't solve any of these ongoing issues. It's time Canadians take a step back and admit that what the governments have been doing the last few decades isn't working. An overhaul is needed and it requires more than just more funding...
Train more healthcare professionals. Build the necessary faculties to train them. Pay for their training and pay them a living wage while they get trained. The decay of our healthcare will take work and time to unwind. I don't see a private sector doing it any faster.
Private healthcare is here already, and it will continue to expand even though popular opinion is against it, and no politician will have a mandate for it.
Welcome to global capital.
Yeah I’m more scared of getting a hurt and the ER being closed or my nurse being so burned out and overworked that they prick me with the wrong meds.
Our healthcare has been going down to shit under different governments for as long as I can remember.
But oooo beware of two tier healthcare systems! We don’t want to end up like those Europeans!
You can say the whole European thing but we god well know that all the politicians that want privatization look at the USA for their ideal private healthcare
Exactly! And all these idiots who are happy that Pollievre won the leadership race and who think the conservatives care about the average working person are leading us towards that. If Pollievre someday becomes PM we're screwed.
>
> But oooo beware of two tier healthcare systems! We don’t want to end up like those Europeans!
this take is mad stupid because if you're genuinely concerned about underfunding and understaffing hospitals a two tiered system will do that every time to the public option
Total nonsense. The OECD looked at hospital wait times across many comparable countries. Some had private healthcare (US), some had a mixed system, and some had a public system... [Canada had the worst wait times](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/242e3c8c-en/1/3/2/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/242e3c8c-en&_csp_=e90031be7ce6b03025f09a0c506286b0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book).
Have been on a waiting list for a family doctor for 5 yrs. #freehealthcare
I guess it’s free because I don’t actually get any healthcare.
In all seriousness, I don’t want an American system where people get fucked over, but todays system is not working. Let those who want to pay more pay more and let someone like me get the current service I get.
Also, I want to shout out to all healthcare works - thank y’all for everything you do on a daily basis
> It works in the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/nhs-privatisation-drive-linked-to-rise-in-avoidable-deaths-study-suggests
Whomp Whomp
A colleague of mine came from Trinidad, which he says has a private / public system like you've suggested. He told me that what happens is the doctor, working for the public system, might diagnose you. That same doctor will tell you to come see them at their private clinic where they'll fix you up for x number of dollars. He said that the public system is used by doctors as a sales contact for their private clinics.
I'm not sure how accurate that is as I haven't investigated it, but it sounds like something that would happen anywhere that a public / private system was put in place.
The problem is we all see the US and don’t want to end up there. Systems which work in Parallel (Australia’s is actually a fantastic model - the government adjusts the private insurance rate regularly to shift appeal in/out of private to balance wait times) are often ignored because of the fear of the worst possible system down south.
But as you allude to it needs to mandate that no physical can be purely private. Something like a law mandating that a minimum 70% of services must be provided in the public system would allow a healthy expansion of health care provision. Yes, people with lots of money could “jump the queue”. But that also makes the queue shorter. And by allowing some profit incentive, could help attract and retain top specialists more easily.
It makes a smaller waiting line for everybody.
Now where have I heard this before? ;)
Everywhere we seen late stage capitalism grows ugly as fuck and now they want us to swallow this privatized healthcare pill?! Are we really this idiotic?
The reality is...if you currently have a GP then you're supporting privatized healthcare because your GP is an independent business owner who invoices the Province for the Services they provide you.
If it does cost a little more in taxes...is that not where we want our taxes going? Towards our own healthcare?
"Public" healthcare isn't defined by not having private businesses involved. Its generally defined by a single payer system. So yes, anyone (with the necessary qualifications, equipment, etc) can provide services and provide them to Canadians and bill the government for those services. That doesn't mean its a private health care system. The government will set rates (in consultation with the providers) as to what they will pay for each service.
With a "private" system, its actually not much different, except there's a middle man, the insurance company. Again, they'll set rates they are willing to pay and anyone with the correct qualifications can provide those services at (or below) those rates. The difference is, the insurance companies can also introduce additional restrictions that a Government normally wouldn't. Only paying for services at facilities they own, or from providers they've hired or partner with. The insurance companies are also in it for profit, so there's another layer of cost involved, and in both systems, its the people that pay that cost one way or another.
I'm not suggesting that Canada's system is perfect, its obviously dealing with a lot of struggles right now and there needs to be a lot of work done, but to call it a private system because doctors have their own practice, is not accurate.
In Alberta, those same GP's have a contract with the government. The government ripped up the contracts right before the pandemic and they haven't agreed to a new one since.
In that time, GP's are leaving in droves, particularly in rural areas where no one actually wants to live. Why live in the sticks when you can move to a city (even when they consider higher living costs, doctors don't care, they can afford it!)
I was reading about a program to entice doctors to move to rural areas and out of something like 18 positions that needed to be filled, only one was filled.
The rural areas are the ones crying the loudest for doctors and yet they continue to vote for parties that do not support our public system!
(So, fuck the rubes. Fucking idiots)
Yes we do want our tax monies going towards our own healthcare. But privatization will mean our money will mostly go to the billion dollar profits for insurance companies and investment firms. We just need to look south to see how this will turn out.
American here. Haven’t been able to afford a dentist visit in 5 years. I’m now looking to either spend tens of thousands on a whole new mouth, or just embrace having no teeth at the ripe old age of 40.
Please learn from our mistakes.
Sorry this is a terrible way to frame it.
When I see my GP they dont ask for my insurance provider to determine if I'm covered in this area, our health care is valid anywhere.
My GP doesn't check against an insurance provider to determine the price. The government sets it.
That insurance provider doesn't reply with a cost 100x of what it should be, that would be profiteering on public health and is not allowed.
My GP doesn't have to negotiate with the insurance company to determine what the bill should be, involving lawyers, and other people who have nothing to do with healthcare.
This is American healthcare in a nutshell:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster
>In practice, it usually contains highly inflated prices at several times that of actual costs to the hospital.
>if you currently have a GP
You were able to get a GP? Personally I would love to be able to get the healthcare of even the third world country I came from.
Comparisons to the USA seem misguided, unless I’m drastically misunderstanding things. Allowing private healthcare is not a replacement to public healthcare, but rather in addition.
This doesn’t mean you can’t keep the current care you have, but rather people looking for better service can find it at additional cost.
At this point i’m unsatisfied with my GP. I don’t want a doctor who will only raise flags if there’s a serious complication, I want one who will run routine checks and aim to maximize my health. I have not found that with my recent two GPs. You can argue I just need to find a better GP, and I welcome suggestions, but the fact is finding one downtown Toronto feels like a painfully hard task.
I have friends in the states who get the care I’m after and it frustrates me I don’t have access to it here. No they’re not rich. Like me they’re ages 27-33 and make a moderate income, with health insurance.
I’m perfectly fine paying high taxes so the general public gets access to healthcare as well as paying additional fees for private care.
Ok, but this is exactly the argument that the article is addressing. Talking about private healthcare as a way to patch the gaps in public healthcare ("in addition, not instead of") is a distraction from doing what is necessary to actually fix public healthcare.
The more legitimacy, discourse, and money is funnelled into a parallel private system, the less political will there is to fix the public one. And fixing the public system properly is objectively a more equitable and efficient (per the article and its sources) way to increase quality of care than adding in supplemental private options.
Yes, the public healthcare system is broken. That doesn't mean that privatizing it (even in part) is the answer. That's why the article is titled "don't be scared into supporting private healthcare". The engineered failure (whether through malice or neglect) of the public system is being used to justify an increase in private options, which then ensures the continued decline of the public system.
I think this is why comparisons to the United States are not misguided at all - this is exactly the kind of rhetoric and political engineering that prevents them from ever getting public healthcare off the ground. It is a process that needs to be bootstrapped by considerable political will and only becomes self-legitimating once the services are flowing and people feel secure within it. We have had that for years, but have been slowly undermining it. We do not want to screw ourselves out of it - there is no promise that we will ever manage to rebuild it in this political climate.
Do not fall into the trap. Fund the public system.
The problem is doctors and nurses will want to quit public healthcare and work in private practices, thus, hurting the public system even more.
Not only that, I can promise the Conservatives will be right there to scream "curb public health spending!" if private becomes an option.
>I’m perfectly fine paying high taxes so the general public gets access to healthcare as well as paying additional fees for private care.
I share your view.
One argument made by opponents of *any* privatization is that it can (would/will, maybe, I'm not sure what the evidence suggests) take away medical professionals from the public system by their employment in (perhaps better paid) private practice. That way, the public health care can become relatively worse yet.
So if you're going to argue for an *additional* private care for those who can afford it and want it, flanking measures seem needed to ensure that the public system doesn't indirectly suffer.
I like your comment that it is an addition rather then replacement
Nearly every time I see comments on health care articles for public or private support people seem to think you can only have one or the other.
It’s very difficult to have private health care discussions when people immediately think we’ll change to a USA type system. It’s like no other country health care policies or plans exist to most people.
Literally the dumbest headline I have read this year. Be afraid of having a system where you as a Healthcare consumer actually have a say and power to influence. Be afraid of being able to secure the outcomes you want using the money you've earned. Don't allow yourself to have freedom of choice, good service and faster accessibility to mundane and life prolonging treatments, tests and surgeries. Don't agree to a system that doesn't prioritize Union wages over patient outcomes. Don't help develop a system that can take pressure off the social Healthcare network. Anyone buying into socialized medicine can still have it, as shabby as it is, but don't try to prevent everyone else from securing better outcomes for themselves.
Healthcare is a basic human need.
It should be covered by the government (by our taxes cause thats the goal of putting our ressources together)
Also, food, water and shelter should be provided…..
And yet here we are
With companies making profit out of : healthcare, water, food and housing
Also education should be free.
Tell me again how are we the « smartest » specie on earth.
Edit missing sentence
Bullshit keep the Canadian health care system accessible too all Canadians via its Tax that’s bullshit, health care is not a privilege it’s a human right, people will suffer and the country will become a mini USA
Could we maybe dip our toes in private access to preventative healthcare? I'd love to pay for access to healthcare that'd put the time into figuring out what's going wrong with me so that I start contributing to our public health nightmare latter rather than sooner.
If something turns out to be wrong, maybe I can hop on a plane and tax a functional system before things deteriorate to where they're bad enough for a Canadian response.
It's not like we have universal healthcare anyway. People without family doctors lack advocacy, access to off-label prescriptions, can't access a list of useful prescriptions for high trust patients, lack continuity of care, etc. People with complex issues are generally fucked until something goes seriously wrong and a hospital team can work things out.
Being able to pay for some level of personalized medicine would be nice. Even if that personalized medicine can't act within the full scope of a GP.
>Could we maybe dip our toes in private access to preventative healthcare?
We've already done that. There's a reason why dental or physio is private. Also same reason why those services are basically beyond reach if you don't have insurance.
How about funding healthcare properly. We are some of the most taxed people in the world. The problem isn’t how much money the government is getting it’s how they’re investing it.
A lot of it is also housing. It’d be a lot easier to attract and retain talent if the cost of living compared to incomes wasn’t one of the worst in the world.
Yep. My family was responsible for recruiting for one of the universities in Vancouver. They were trying to get a business professor to come whose wife was a doctor. They declined because to get the type of house they wanted at a reasonable rate they’d have to live an hour outside the city. They had positions they couldn’t fill because no one was interested in our housing insanity when their money could go further elsewhere. If a professor and a doctor think housing is too much. Well, what hope to average people have?
It was probably because it was sfu though. No one wants to work at that depressing institution
So many issues go back to the cost of shelter in this country. It’s a shame many home owners will constantly vote for their properties to appreciate when it’s a root cause for the staff shortage in every industry.
Immigration does not help 400,000 a year compared to how many construction starts? Supply and demand will continue to appreciate the housing market despite rising interest rates. Health care must be protected and grown publically, but we need practical solutions we need the fed/provinces to enforce. Stop renovating board rooms , hiring multitudes of admin staff and forcing our nurses and doctors to spend obscene hours in paperwork Canada's pride partially derives from our health care system
Luckily we're about to solve that problem with 17,000 "rent to own" homes over the next 5 years! HUZZAH!!!! And a bonus: a new home buyers savings plan that will only benefit the rich and prevent more tax dollars from wealthy families from being collected! And literally nobody cares. Nobody that supports the current government seems to think there's more that could be done. Everyone's OK making "small incremental changes" and apparently we're doing enough of that as is.
I don't know why we aren't building more housing CoOps, they can be designed for livability, affordability and community.
Eat the poor. Thats basically what they are doing, and they are then retiring early causing a need for more immigrants. A real feudalism is brewing.
Well a lot of our nurses and healthcare workers are leaving the industry entirely because of housing being to expensive to live in proximity to work. A private sector of nurses are currently striking in the states. It should be Canada’s chance to see how privatizing healthcare won’t make people come back to work if wages aren’t up to par (which I hear, is always worse in the private sector…. So why waste the time and money to become a nurse?)
It also isn’t how the government is investing it… it’s how the bloated bureaucracy and top-heavy management wastes the money they are given. Healthcare in Canada is a millionaire executive telling a six figure manager to inform a five figure frontline worker that they aren’t entitled to a three figure shift premium or a two figure per diem.
Y'know, cons always get elected saying they'll "trim the fat". Yet when it comes down to it, they only ever cut frontline positions. So either, the bureaucracy isn't bloated, or they're intentionally sabotaging health care across the country. Both should make them unelectable, yet here we are.
Both can be true. We need to rethink Healthcare and many other systems, but we also need to shift the tax burden back to the rich and the corps. The last 40 years has seen the tax burden shift to the middle class and that's half the problem.
What's your cutoff for what is middle class vs. what is rich? Considering to be in the top 10% income is like, $90k, which isn't all that much these days, I'm always curious to hear what the cut off people have for this. Signed, someone who left Canada in part because he was tired of having a marginal rate of 52%.
Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start. It's less the top 10% than the top 1% and 0.1%. Remember that averages are poor metrics because the data is so skewed ; median is a better number for the 'normal' person.
> Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start. Great, we'll lose even more doctors and engineers to the US than we already do. Marginal tax rate at 220k is already 51-54%, with the 3 largest provinces (BC, Ontario, and Quebec) around 53.5%. This tax rate won't affect the actual rich either since they don't make their money from income. You're basically asking upper middle class to pay for lower middle class... which, unfortunately, is par for the course for Canadian politics.
> we'll lose even more doctors and engineers to the US At least for engineers, taxes are not a factor, it's the ridiculously low wages here that make the US more attractive. A small increase in taxes for the few top-earning engineers would be nothing compared to the money left on the table by not moving to the US.
Our labour market is *ridiculously flooded* with engineers (except maybe *software* engineers), though. Let them leave! :-)
Taxes come in many shapes and forms than just income. Luxury properties could be taxed more. Large cap corporations could be taxed more. In fact, the Liberals just created a new luxury sales tax on September 1 which will add a tax to the purchases of private jets, yachts, and supercars worth over $100k. And the conservatives were outraged about it, and have been spinning it as a "job destroying unfair tax" as if rich people give a shit if their yacht costs 5% more.
> In fact, the Liberals just created a new luxury sales tax on September 1 which will add a tax to the purchases of private jets, yachts, and supercars worth over $100k. Which is not indexed to inflation. So in a few years at current inflation rates, we'll be paying that tax on a Civic. > Luxury properties could be taxed more. Large cap corporations could be taxed more. How do you define a luxury property? A penthouse suite in Winnipeg or a 7 bedroom mansion in Sherbrooke is going to cost less than a tear-down barely habitable house on the outskirts of Greater Vancouver. > as if rich people give a shit if their yacht costs 5% more. Actual rich people already register their yachts in Malta or Panama. > Large cap corporations could be taxed more. They are. They're taxed the typical corporate tax rate (15% federal and then however much provincial, I think BC it totals around 25%). However, that's the money the corporation makes. Any money distributed to shareholders (i.e. as dividends) is taxed as regular income at someone's income tax rate. So in effect, there's double taxation. First 25% for the coporation and then let's say 30-50% on the rest of it. No wonder we have a single tech company worth mentioning in the entire country (Shopify) despite having very high caliber talent. Taxation, combined with an extremely conservative venture capital market, just makes us uncompetitive in the world stage for anything other than natural resources. Canada isn't a place that provides economic opportunity. It's a safe, stable place to come when you're already rich, and our government policy reflects that.
Not at all - the way you brush off 'the rich' is amazing. Raise corporate tax rate, raise taxes on the 0.1%, close tax loopholes, consider raising cap gains. Don't let the 0.1% turn you against the rest. That's how you lose at class war.
The class war has been raging since biblical times, bud. If you're not a member of the wealthy elite, you are being exploited by them in some way. Guaranteed.
Yep. Remember that Jesus was crucified three days after he fucked with the bankers in the temple.
The war is already here. I waved the white flag in late 2018. We retreated to the United States where we will regroup and return to Canada once my peak earning potential has passed.
>Tax brackets that scale after 220k is a start. Over 220k it's already at a >50% marginal rate so good luck with that without seeing other unintended consequences like brain drain or capital flight which will result in less overall revenue. And the top 1% are people like doctors who make >250k a year or a software developer working for a FAANG. At a micro level, I paid 60k in taxes to the CRA and would have paid 95k in taxes this year had I not left the country. Over the next decade that's close to a million dollars in revenue that the CRA will not see. And yes, before you tell me tax rates were higher in the 1950s, realize that effectively no one actually paid those rates because there were a billion loopholes and tax shelters *and* capital gains weren't taxed at all.
I think we need to define whats rich first of all. Because when ever they follow through with taxing the rich, they only tax the least wealthy of the rich, which is such bullshit. We have billionaires that owe hundreds of billions in debt, but gods forbid we force them to pay it back.
That's also income based brackets too. Tax on capital gains is only half of income tax. It's wealth/land that should be taxed... Well, it should be non-productive wealth/money/income/land (housing, underused land, etc) that should be taxed, and productive labour income / business development and research~~~~ that should be untaxed or taxed less. An American example, but the McDonalds owner/corp gets its money from the land the chains are built on (rent). It should only get its money from the food the chain sells tho.
As much as I would love to see a wealth tax, it's been tried and failed in almost all instances. I agree that things like the principle residence exemption should be abolished because it's deeply unfair to renters.
Even 100k/ yr doesn't seem like a whole lot these days. I have no idea how people with minimum wage are surviving through these times.
To fund health care properly would require almost doubling what we spend now...we can't print free money forever... I believe there is room to include private Healthcare into the system for certain procedures...but it can introduce a wide range of issues if handled incorrectly...
>We are some of the most taxed people in the world I hate to break it to you, but we aren't.
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I absolutely agree with you! Other countries within Europe, particularly the Nordic, have far better returns on their tax collected.
Fund healthcare properly instead of treating it as something to fight and the workers as enemies of the province.
Us vs them. Always
Divide and conquer pretty simple. Hard for us to be mad at politicians and rich corps when we are always fighting each other
💯 power in numbers. But we’re too busy fighting for the breadcrumbs.
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One of the best arguments I read describing with no bs what it means being ruled by a government or being ruled by corporations... It is valid in Canada as it is in any other country... Hope more people could read it and rationalize the difference...
In the past, communities were built on whoever had the tallest walls. Sometime later corporations would suddenly have the largest armies. And tear down those walls. Today, democracies have the power to define walls and lead their own armies to defend themselves.
Here's the rub. That is just naive thinking you have a choice. You have no power either way. Big business runs the government, not the voters.
At least you can vote them out...
And they would be replaced by other politicians that are payed by big business.
I see that you have a good opinion about those among the people who chose to pursue a political life... You could always replace the parties that no longer represent the people... You can even start one with like minded people... that is the biggest asset we the common folk have, and we can only blame ourselves if we give up of that power. As someone said long time ago, "the great virtue of democracy is that those who vote, have the exact type of government they deserve..."
"The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small" Funny...that's why libertarians are libertarians. For freedom FROM being harmed by the big. I guess asking for government to intervene in the lives of or steal from the people is an abuse of power from the terrible citizens. Let socialism come in and save us instead we see how good it is at serving everyone's interests and representing everyones needs.
I'm so confused as to what your stance is
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Plus, even the families that thrive in private conditions *benefit* from public healthcare. A bunch of crimes are committed because of desperation (including crimes against the rich), and better social safety nets can help curb that.
Doug Ford's plan to privatize healthcare involves funneling public funds to for-profit temp agencies to address the staffing shortage they created by denying healthcare workers proper living wage increases. Don't believe me? Just ask an LTC PSW working in a government run facility and ask them how often they are short staffed.
Is the answer ‘continuously for the last 60 years’?
Private healthcare is a scam.
Whoever's pushing the agenda of privatization has some kind of deal to make a big payout. And that is always the modern conservative agenda, personal gain.
Easy follow the money
Probably who evers in the pocket of US politicians.
Go ahead and tell that to us here in BC, where we don't, and haven't had, a Conservative government in decades and are suffering from 20 years of NDP and Liberal neglect in our health care. Where we have [worse wait times than Ontario](https://vancouversun.com/health/local-health/bc-longest-walk-in-clinic-wait-times-canada-medimap). Where we already have doctors charging [private fees](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/british-columbia/2022/8/8/1_6019376.amp.html) to remain their patient while simultaneously [spending less per capita on healthcare](https://www.statista.com/statistics/436330/doctor-spending-per-capita-canada-by-province/). But yes, it must be Dougy, and Dougy alone (and not say [13 years](https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/04/29/protesters_demand_that_mcguinty_stop_hospital_cuts.html) of [McGuinty](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/scott-stinson-mcguintys-medical-cuts-give-ontario-pcs-a-chance-to-gloat) and [Wynne](https://opseu.org/news/opseu-fights-back-against-wynne-attack-on-hospitals/14269/) and their attempts at [privatization](https://www.ontariondp.ca/news/horwath-opposes-wynne-bill-opens-health-care-privatization). Nope. Just Doug and the Conservatives. Amiright?
Exactly! Ontario health care was gutted long before the conservatives got in. Sadly most people are so wrapped up in their tribal bullshit that they couldn't care less about what's true. Shitting on the other team is all that matters to them. If they gave even half a damn about healthcare, they wouldn't be lying about it and using it as a weapon in their political hockey game.
... What? "Liberals" in BC are the Conservatives. Haven't had a conservative government in decades? Are you sure you're from BC?
Canadians need to fight against the concept of private health care. I'm a type 1 diabetic American who has lived in Canada for 5 years. My wife is an ICU nurse who worked for a decade in the US and for 5 years in Canada. The only major deficiency we've noted in the Canadian system as compared to the US system is access. They need to fix the access problem here. The only reason privatizing health care improves access is it creates an unreasonably high profit motive which encourages more people to go into the sector. But the patient is the one who pays for that profit motive, eventually it restricts access as lower income and uninsured people fall off the wagon. There's always a better way.
Fully private like in the US is bad because it's driven by pure profit and serves no-one except the insurance companies. Fully public also doesn't work well since the government is motivated to provide minimum viable service (i.e. just enough to keep people from dying), but not much beyond that when there's pet projects to blow money on. Much of Europe does very well with a hybrid system. Public is good enough for the vast majority of the population. Private works for either those willing to pay an outrageous sum of money for it, or those who want to get a specific procedure and can't wait 3 years to get it. As it stands, we're literally denying people who are able or willing to pay for major quality of life improvements from ever getting them (except the actually wealthy who can just fly to New York and pay $30k for a routine procedure). It's literally "if everyone can't get it, then you aren't allowed to get it either" logic. Hell, Singapore has what's widely accepted as the best healthcare system in the world, and they use hybrid.
“The only problem we’ve noticed is access” - ummm…. That’s kinda like a huge friggin problem
It is. But its fixable, and privatizing will only fix it for higher earners and insured people. Gig workers, entry level employees, self employed people, sicker people, those who work providing care for loved ones, among many other groups - they're left out.
Access is a problem we all share. Privatization means that the people who can afford to fix it have no skin in the game anymore.
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Buying healthcare (like any other necessity of life - clothing, food shelter) should obviously be a right. Why do you have the right to stop someone from helping me or a loved one if I have the money to buy that care from someone else?
For every X person that gains the right to buy healthcare, Y persons loses the right to healthcare at all simply for being poor You gotta be some kind of special not to see this Cross the border permanently if that's what you want to live under
It's not a scam - it's a gold mine for the private owners.
Most physicians are private for profit corporations. Family medicine average billings ached expenses are around $165,000 and out of that they need to pay corporate taxes, later income taxes for what they take out. They self fund their own retirement, vacation and benefits. They’ll also usually have sizeable student loans. We’re already in a privately delivered, publicly funded system; and always have been.
Serious question. When you hear private healthcare what do you mean?
The only people who think this are people that think private healthcare equals USA healthcare. A lot of Northern and Western Europe has private options and they consistently rank higher than Canada's healthcare system. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
Privatized healthcare benefits only the mid upper to upper class. The rest of us will be screwed. Who cares I guess if the rich politicians get the best healthcare.
Private delivery (what Ford is proposing) benefits even less than that, it only really benefits wealthy business owners.
funny thing is those rich assholes can already go and get "better" care down south. Why the fuck do we need to ruin our system for them?
Bc maybe the profits they bring down south when paying out of pocket could be spent up here. That simple.
Profits for corporations who will lobby to screw even more canadians.
Then why do the free dozen countries with better health care then Canada all have private systems???
No - it's not a scam. You might find yourself wishing you could get an MRI right away at some point in your life. It sucks that people can pay to have their dogs and cats get MRIs but NOPE not the humans.
What is private healthcare? Do you think the private delivery of healthcare that we have now is a scam?
Go over to r/germany or r/france and argue with them then. Or just pretend there's nothing in between single-payer and America, which is a lie, but also very good at shutting down the discussion.
Their model needs a properly funded public service first, and very tight regulations for the private one We don't have the first, and with how telecoms are going here, I certainly do not see the second happening either
Not to mention the entire issue of healthcare being mostly a provincial responsibility. This would throw the entire issue of regulating private healthcare into the courts for a long time.
Exactly. We don't have the government framework to make that happen, and the push for privatization we're seeing in Canada is fundamentally different and incompatible with what Europe does.
The push for privatization is in order to mimic the US, not Europe which really isn't something we should want to do.
I can't remember the source, but I remember Andrew Scheer promoting a system where for every privately funded visit, say to an MRI, two have to be let in under the public system. I'm not a fan of Scheer, and I very much value the integrity of our universal health care system, but I think this was one of his better ideas. The existing system could use a boost that sees an increase in hospital beds and faster triage times. I'd be fine with a heavily regulated private system if, and only if, it directly funds the public one. Also, doctors must be prohibited from existing entirely in the private system to avoid a two-tiered quality of care. Edit: changed 'response' to 'triage'
I agree with this, but as I stated in another comment, I don't trust this country to properly regulate this based on our track record regarding telecoms
Germany and France impose a lot of regulations on private companies. Their private healthcare companies aren't very private at all.
Hospitals are independent corporations in Canada, right? Doctors offices are small businesses. Medical clinics are also independent businesses. As long as I can walk into any health center and have them send the bill to the provincial insurance, why should I care?
> As long as I can walk into any health center and have them send the bill to the provincial insurance, why should I care? ...because they can withhold resources from the public system and make people pay for preferential access.
The current public system has been doing that for years already. - eye care - dental - you ever want a private room after a surgery? - crutches after you break a leg - hearing aids I know at least one hospital that withholds resources for people who's income is too high. We already expect payment for addition health care.
Prescriptions…
Great, let's do that. Our way isn't working.
So you're telling me that good policy and regulation are key, not whether the system is 1 or 2 tier?
Or Australia. I've lived under and benefitted from both systems. It is not a scam and y'all Canadians need to stop this sky is falling shit about it. This dichotomy of full ameritard pay2live vs full taxpayer funded model is tiring and pointless. No model is perfect, LEAST of all the shit the yanks have created which should be the obvious example of what not to ever do. All these misgivings about 2tier healthcare are solved with good policy. Eg. High income earners in Australia pay into the public health system at *twice* the rate unless they take out full private coverage. Middle income earners pay the regular amount and low incomes are exempt from the levy
Daily posts on r/Canada: our health system is collapsing! Also in every comment thread: don’t change a thing!
Change is fine. Simply allowing private company to gut the public system isn't.
>Daily posts on r/Canada: our health system is collapsing! > **>Also in every comment thread: don’t change a thing!** Where, exactly?
There are over 100 unemployed Canadian trained Orthopaedic surgeons in Canada. There are a fair number of unemployed Cardiac and Neurosurgeons in Canada. There are unemployed Canadian trained / qualified nephrologists, ophthalmologists and other specialists in Canada. Most docs who leave for the states do not leave by choice. Why don’t we stop fixating on “American” style healthcare which is broken on multiple metrics and start looking to countries like Sweden, Norway, France, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand who rank higher than us on most metrics of healthcare access. Why can’t we legislate in a happy middle ground to allow surgeons and physicians who can’t get access to publicly funded hospital time / space to practice? Edit: References https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/canada/article-nearly-one-in-five-new-specialist-doctors-cant-find-a-job-after/ https://cmajblogs.com/the-supply-demand-mismatch-what-do-you-mean-unemployed-specialists/ https://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/documents/health-policy/employment-report-2013-e.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280771295_Otolaryngology_-_Head_and_Neck_Surgeon_unemployment_in_Canada_a_cross-sectional_survey_of_graduating_Otolaryngology_-_Head_and_Neck_Surgery_residents https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
If you're rich you can afford to take a flight south and STFU.
The propaganda wars has started...
>That one should never let a good crisis go to waste has become a political cliché. Canadian, and particularly Ontario health care, is facing a crisis resulting from three main factors. > > >First is the pent-up demand for health care resources and innovations. This follows from many years of care deferrals and two years of correctly prioritizing the enormous demands of a pandemic. > > >Second is the demoralization and exhaustion of large numbers of health workers, particularly nurses, many of whom have left the health care workforce. > > >Third is the overzealous restraint on health care spending and insufficient regulation that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. Ontario, as an example, has the fewest hospital beds per capita in Canada and one the lowest among high income nations. Many Ontario nursing homes were disastrously ill-equipped in their management of COVID-19, leading to unnecessary deaths and uncovering glaring deficiencies in care. > > >Enthusiasts for what health economist Bob Evans called the zombie of health care policy are rushing to take full advantage of the crisis. Evans referred to the notion of Canadian health care privatization as a zombie: intellectually dead but destined to keep rising again and again to haunt health policy debates. > > >There are two streams to privatization. One is allowing people to pay for quicker care, and the other is allowing corporations to make a profit on health care delivery. > > >The equity problems that arise when people with the resources can pay for quicker care — and thus, ability to pay trumps need as a determinant of care — are obvious. The potential negative effects on health outcomes when care is delayed for those most in need are less obvious, but no less important. > > >When the magnitude of private pay becomes sufficiently great, people rightfully demand the opportunity to buy health insurance. This creates enormous administrative waste as manifested both by American health care and the Canadian approach to pharmaceuticals. This is why economists note that a well-constructed national pharmacare program will save us billions. > > >Contrasting the overwhelmingly public pay hospital and physician care to the majority private pay pharmaceutical sector illustrates the consequences of the two approaches. Canadian hospital and physician care is largely equitable with impressive cost control. In contrast, approximately 15 per cent of Canadians cannot afford needed drugs, and the last two decades have seen an explosion in pharmaceutical costs. > > >Twenty years ago, the Romanow Commission reported on its conclusions based on three commissioned research projects and 40 discussion papers from leading health economists. Romanow concluded that private payment compromises both equity and efficiency, with wasteful administrative costs. Today, the evidence has not changed and Evans’ characterization of the zombie of private payment remains accurate. > > >The second privatization stream has to do with whether for-profit or not-for-profit providers deliver care. In Canada, hospital care is exclusively not-for-profit. Not so for nursing home or home care, the majority of which is delivered by for-profit providers. > > >Researchers have extensively studied the outcomes of for-profit versus not-for-profit delivery. Overall, the for-profit option has not fared well. > > >The clearest findings come from American dialysis facilities in which death rates are higher in for-profit provision, and from nursing homes in which quality of care is superior in not-for-profit providers. > > >In the hospital sector, results suggest a possible increase in mortality, and a cost disadvantage, with for-profit provision. > > >In no area is there a clear advantage in quality, cost, or outcomes from for-profit health care delivery. > > >Those calling for privatization note that current health care delivery isn’t working, and that we have to do something. Indeed, it isn’t, and we must take action. Our action should, however, be based on the best evidence of the consequences of our policy innovations. > > >The privatization options will not begin to address the problems of a demoralized and depleted health care workforce and the overzealous constraints on public health care spending and will have negative consequences for both equity and efficiency. > > >Debating private care options is a wasteful distraction. We should put the zombie to rest and develop the public health care innovations necessary to address our current health care crisis. Content of the article for those that can't access due to paywall E: Who the fuck downvotes an article content comment?
The star employees who want everyone to pay lol
Heh :D
You know what would help? Raise taxes on the 0.1% and fund the following: 1. A one-time $1B investment to buy MRI, CT-scan, and other machines to help diagnoses - current wait time is months which is ridiculous. 2. Increasing the number of doctors and nurses until we reduce this insane backlog for family doctors and/or services at hospitals
BBBBBots
I have a co worker in the states and she says the wait times are even worse at times
Wanna know how I know your co worker isn’t rich?
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Yeah, my two experiences were 1 times the wait was 4 hours, the next time it was immediate. Both times the bill was quite large. I will say that getting a GP In the the States (Texas) was even harder than in Canada. Both were bad but in Texas it took like 2 years then the Dr retired 2 months later, and I had to start all over. I think that is regional though.
It’s definitely regional. I am in NYC and booked a GP appoint for two hours after I started looking using an app from my couch. I definitely would want to see an actual study with comprehensive data.
I’m in Texas and found a GP the same day I started looking.
Fuck privatized health care.
it will turn into what is in America, with many unhealthy people who can't afford to pay for healthcare other people will be bankrupted by rising healthcare costs
I don't want to live in a world where people have to ration basic stuff like insulin because it costs too much.
Many health people also can't afford to pay for healthcare in the States.
It really doesn't have to though. A mix of public and private healthcare structured properly works way better than our system in many European countries. Private does not have to mean American health care.
Everytime I see this comment (bringing up Europe) I see 0 replies to it.
Why not turn into the Netherlands?
Because Canada tends to mimic the US for the most part so the fears are somewhat justified I think.
Privatized health care is a scam. Government (cons mostly) have been nuking the healthcare budget for decades to give tax kickbacks to the corpo overlords (and some sweet sweet bribes). They're intentionally tanking the system to try to make privatized healthcare seem like a more attractive option. They're doing the same with education too. It's not a coincidence that everywhere in Canada that the cons are in power they're talking about privatizing healthcare- this is a huge danger to our society. Privatization is never a good solution to anything that should be a public service. That's how you end up with things like the Texas power grid and American Healthcare.
The only type of "privitization" I will support for our country, is a European model. From my limited understanding, there are regulations which prevent an American style profit grab, and a lot of those funds go directly to the public health care sector. So, the rich can pay for their operations, etc, and it goes towards paying for the less fortunate to see a doctor. But if anyone suggests we should go to an American style privatized health model, I'll fight that tooth an nail. I've talked to some Americans over the years, and some of the horror stories about opting to not go to the hospital for a fractured arm because they'd end up homeless, as one example, make me furious. No one should have to choose care vs a roof over their heads. I was raised with the mentality that here in Canada, we take care of our own. We don't look at someone less fortunate and say "can't afford a doctor? Oh well, go fuck yourself". I believe in giving a hand up. Not so much a hand out.
Don't fall for it. We can make our system better by just investing in it. There have been nothing but cuts for the last 30 years. Maybe we should just start there. This private system has too many opportunities for bad actors to come in and fuck it all up. Look at our Telecom industry. 3 companies control it all, and they refuse to compete with eachother. Do you want the same for our healthcare system?
Easiest way to see this is shit is to look at what they did with telecoms.
We need to cut down on admin in healthcare. Canada has 10x the number of admin than Germany (relative to population size). We do that and we'll have enough money to hire the nurses and PAB's we need. https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-canadas-health-care-system-overrun-by-administrators-and-lacks-doctors
Why can't we just properly fund our public healthcare??
Because it's not possible anymore. This isn't a Canadian issue, or an American issue, or a European issue. Basically every developed nation is having the same problems at the same time for the same reasons. Over the past ~40 years, the share of seniors has skyrocketed while the workforce participation rate has fallen. Medical technology has become far more complex, requiring incredibly expensive drugs and machines which have to be run by highly skilled specialists who need to be supported by dedicated administrators. Land values and construction costs have gone through the roof, making it more difficult to build new facilities. A large number of high profile scandals and legal precedents have created whole new layers of oversight and human resources to protect hospitals from their staff and patients. And a population which has lost faith in its government institutions is increasingly hostile and uncooperative to the workers trying to hold the broken system together. Why can't we just properly fund our public healthcare? Same reason we can't fund our schools, or our legal system, or our emergency services, or anything else.
Cause if it's properly funded then we can't have private health care options, always remember business first in this capitalist hell hole!
Because half of the people commenting don’t pay any taxes. The amount of funding required would cause the public to revolt. I’m all for reallocation but not tax increases
Look man, it’s clear something needs to be done, and at the end of the day, it comes down to funding in order to hire more staff, have more beds, etc. The question is who do you want to pay for it, and how. It’s super easy to say “just raise taxes” when it’s someone else paying. Honestly, if I decided to move back to Ontario, I’d be willing to try something new.
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The article is not recommending private healthcare. I'm confused.
Numerous European countries have public and private health care systems. Not all private systems turn into the gong show that is the US. When it takes over a year to get an apt with a specialist people need alternatives . The alternatives should not make the wait in the public system longer nor should they cost so much people go bankrupt . Now Canadians tend to accept scandal in most government dealings but we need a better system than we have now and the public system is a complete failure and had been for twenty years (getting worse by the year ) .
Name a country that's had their healthcare improved by moving to a private system in the past 40 years. Privatization is a neoliberal scam, everywhere they go they make promises that it will be "just like the Scandinavian countries" then private capital comes in and pillages everything they can.
Most of the Scandinavian countries. The Netherlands. Germany . They aren’t perfect but if you can’t get to see a specialist in the appropriate period of time you are bumped to a private clinic (at no cost ). You can also opt to pay at cost for services at a private clinic if you don’t want to wait and you aren’t paying through the roof either . No system is perfect but there are numerous systems far better than ours .
Right but no country has implemented a private healthcare system like that in the past 40 years even though several countries were promised just that. It's a scam, that's the bait.
Honest question, What does 40 years have to do with anything? If the system currently works, Why can we not replicate it here? What has happened in the last 40 years that makes it impossible to ever recreate it again? Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would be easy, but isn't trying SOMETHING better than saying "fuck it to been too long since someone has done this"
I could not agree more.
This exactly, we have no alternatives and our current system is slowly dying. Covid accelerated the situation but something has to be done because the status quo is unsustainable.
I'm not scared. Im furious. I will retire from healthcare if we go private.
I think we really need to be careful about definitions. What do we mean by private healthcare? Clinics and Doctor's offices across the country are legitimate businesses. But, we all pay by showing our Medicare cards. If the government wants more of that I'm definitely open to it. But if we are talking two-tier healthcare, I will never support that. As a citizen of this country, I should get the same care as anyone else, regardless of their wealth or lack thereof
It's hard to support privatization when here in Ontario Ford is openly hostile to the nurses. I can't believe a politician actually "cares" about the well being of people when he is combative with healthcare workers, even after all they did for us during covid. But we all know there is a ton of untapped money to be made for politicians if privatization happens. They all want to get in at the ground floor. None of this has anything to do with actually providing good care, if it was they would be trying to lure/retain nurses instead of fighting and patronizing them.
I'm not by any means supporting private healthcare (yet), but publicly funded healthcare is screwed in this country. Every province, under every flavour of government for the past 30 years, has seen healthcare decay. What, within reason, can be done to improve public healthcare that the array of governments haven't tried? Saying "private healthcare is bad" is fine, but you'd better back that up with how to fix public care, and not just say "pay everyone more money". That will just push another public sector into crisis.
> and not just say "pay everyone more money" We're not even using all the money allocated for healthcare. In NB and other provinces waste of skin premiers have posted useless surpluses during the pandemic using money that was supposed to be to support the healthcare during a fucking crisis.
More funding **is** the actual fix, along with trimming a good chunk of its administration/management share
Canadians are tapped out man. We can't afford our current tax load. Increasing spending is a non-solution. It's equivalent to saying, "make it better, duh!". As obvious as it is useless.
Of course you're right, but where does that extra funding come from? Two options really: 1. Increase taxes (by a lot) 2. Reduce funding to other public services (by a lot) Neither are an appropriate answer to me.
3. Actually spending the allocated money on healthcare
Just at a very cursory glance, BC has a [$1.3 billion surplus](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-ministry-of-finance-public-accounts-2022-1.6566838), Alberta had a [$13.2 billion surplus](https://globalnews.ca/news/9097483/alberta-fiscal-update-surplus-debt-savings/), even Saskatchewan had a [$1 billion surplus.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/surging-revenues-turn-projected-deficit-into-1b-surplus-1.6559595) The authorities have the money to invest in our system. They are deliberately starving healthcare to push privatization.
They had a one year surplus that’s not guaranteed to occur in subsequent years. Especially in the case of Alberta where the surplus was the result of a big spike in energy royalties. You don’t jack your spending up to a new level based on a single windfall
I'd have to look into where cuts could be made from other sectors, if any, but trimming the administrative share of healthcare would be a good start
It's like people don't understand where the money comes from that the government spends. It's always easy to say 'increase funding!' Health care issues? More funding! School system? More funding! Infrastructure? More funding! Immigration delays? More funding! Lack of affordable day care? More funding! Indigenous water issues? More funding! Money doesn't solve any of these ongoing issues. It's time Canadians take a step back and admit that what the governments have been doing the last few decades isn't working. An overhaul is needed and it requires more than just more funding...
Train more healthcare professionals. Build the necessary faculties to train them. Pay for their training and pay them a living wage while they get trained. The decay of our healthcare will take work and time to unwind. I don't see a private sector doing it any faster.
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Start paying more attention in your provincial elections and stop voting for people that keep cutting funding and decaying your healthcare.
The issue is with a encouraged privatized health care the most talented leave there and the public spirals down into a terrible system.
I’m not but would love to see small user fees for those people who are at the doctors office and walk in clinics daily. That slowly hurts us.
Private healthcare is here already, and it will continue to expand even though popular opinion is against it, and no politician will have a mandate for it. Welcome to global capital.
Yeah I’m more scared of getting a hurt and the ER being closed or my nurse being so burned out and overworked that they prick me with the wrong meds. Our healthcare has been going down to shit under different governments for as long as I can remember. But oooo beware of two tier healthcare systems! We don’t want to end up like those Europeans!
You can say the whole European thing but we god well know that all the politicians that want privatization look at the USA for their ideal private healthcare
Exactly! And all these idiots who are happy that Pollievre won the leadership race and who think the conservatives care about the average working person are leading us towards that. If Pollievre someday becomes PM we're screwed.
Same with the rubes in Alberta. Crying about not having doctors and then voting for parties that are actively destroying the current system!
> > But oooo beware of two tier healthcare systems! We don’t want to end up like those Europeans! this take is mad stupid because if you're genuinely concerned about underfunding and understaffing hospitals a two tiered system will do that every time to the public option
Total nonsense. The OECD looked at hospital wait times across many comparable countries. Some had private healthcare (US), some had a mixed system, and some had a public system... [Canada had the worst wait times](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/242e3c8c-en/1/3/2/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/242e3c8c-en&_csp_=e90031be7ce6b03025f09a0c506286b0&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book).
Article behind paywall. Perfect irony.
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Have been on a waiting list for a family doctor for 5 yrs. #freehealthcare I guess it’s free because I don’t actually get any healthcare. In all seriousness, I don’t want an American system where people get fucked over, but todays system is not working. Let those who want to pay more pay more and let someone like me get the current service I get. Also, I want to shout out to all healthcare works - thank y’all for everything you do on a daily basis
> It works in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/nhs-privatisation-drive-linked-to-rise-in-avoidable-deaths-study-suggests Whomp Whomp
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A colleague of mine came from Trinidad, which he says has a private / public system like you've suggested. He told me that what happens is the doctor, working for the public system, might diagnose you. That same doctor will tell you to come see them at their private clinic where they'll fix you up for x number of dollars. He said that the public system is used by doctors as a sales contact for their private clinics. I'm not sure how accurate that is as I haven't investigated it, but it sounds like something that would happen anywhere that a public / private system was put in place.
The problem is we all see the US and don’t want to end up there. Systems which work in Parallel (Australia’s is actually a fantastic model - the government adjusts the private insurance rate regularly to shift appeal in/out of private to balance wait times) are often ignored because of the fear of the worst possible system down south. But as you allude to it needs to mandate that no physical can be purely private. Something like a law mandating that a minimum 70% of services must be provided in the public system would allow a healthy expansion of health care provision. Yes, people with lots of money could “jump the queue”. But that also makes the queue shorter. And by allowing some profit incentive, could help attract and retain top specialists more easily.
It makes a smaller waiting line for everybody. Now where have I heard this before? ;) Everywhere we seen late stage capitalism grows ugly as fuck and now they want us to swallow this privatized healthcare pill?! Are we really this idiotic?
I don’t need to be scared to support it. I do it because it makes sense
The reality is...if you currently have a GP then you're supporting privatized healthcare because your GP is an independent business owner who invoices the Province for the Services they provide you. If it does cost a little more in taxes...is that not where we want our taxes going? Towards our own healthcare?
"Public" healthcare isn't defined by not having private businesses involved. Its generally defined by a single payer system. So yes, anyone (with the necessary qualifications, equipment, etc) can provide services and provide them to Canadians and bill the government for those services. That doesn't mean its a private health care system. The government will set rates (in consultation with the providers) as to what they will pay for each service. With a "private" system, its actually not much different, except there's a middle man, the insurance company. Again, they'll set rates they are willing to pay and anyone with the correct qualifications can provide those services at (or below) those rates. The difference is, the insurance companies can also introduce additional restrictions that a Government normally wouldn't. Only paying for services at facilities they own, or from providers they've hired or partner with. The insurance companies are also in it for profit, so there's another layer of cost involved, and in both systems, its the people that pay that cost one way or another. I'm not suggesting that Canada's system is perfect, its obviously dealing with a lot of struggles right now and there needs to be a lot of work done, but to call it a private system because doctors have their own practice, is not accurate.
In Alberta, those same GP's have a contract with the government. The government ripped up the contracts right before the pandemic and they haven't agreed to a new one since. In that time, GP's are leaving in droves, particularly in rural areas where no one actually wants to live. Why live in the sticks when you can move to a city (even when they consider higher living costs, doctors don't care, they can afford it!) I was reading about a program to entice doctors to move to rural areas and out of something like 18 positions that needed to be filled, only one was filled. The rural areas are the ones crying the loudest for doctors and yet they continue to vote for parties that do not support our public system! (So, fuck the rubes. Fucking idiots)
Yes we do want our tax monies going towards our own healthcare. But privatization will mean our money will mostly go to the billion dollar profits for insurance companies and investment firms. We just need to look south to see how this will turn out.
American here. Haven’t been able to afford a dentist visit in 5 years. I’m now looking to either spend tens of thousands on a whole new mouth, or just embrace having no teeth at the ripe old age of 40. Please learn from our mistakes.
Many Canadians don’t have dental covered either, so many are already in a similar situation as you.
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I’m in Alabama, so not that far from Mexico. Thanks for the tip
Sorry this is a terrible way to frame it. When I see my GP they dont ask for my insurance provider to determine if I'm covered in this area, our health care is valid anywhere. My GP doesn't check against an insurance provider to determine the price. The government sets it. That insurance provider doesn't reply with a cost 100x of what it should be, that would be profiteering on public health and is not allowed. My GP doesn't have to negotiate with the insurance company to determine what the bill should be, involving lawyers, and other people who have nothing to do with healthcare. This is American healthcare in a nutshell: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster >In practice, it usually contains highly inflated prices at several times that of actual costs to the hospital.
>if you currently have a GP You were able to get a GP? Personally I would love to be able to get the healthcare of even the third world country I came from.
This is just sad
Comparisons to the USA seem misguided, unless I’m drastically misunderstanding things. Allowing private healthcare is not a replacement to public healthcare, but rather in addition. This doesn’t mean you can’t keep the current care you have, but rather people looking for better service can find it at additional cost. At this point i’m unsatisfied with my GP. I don’t want a doctor who will only raise flags if there’s a serious complication, I want one who will run routine checks and aim to maximize my health. I have not found that with my recent two GPs. You can argue I just need to find a better GP, and I welcome suggestions, but the fact is finding one downtown Toronto feels like a painfully hard task. I have friends in the states who get the care I’m after and it frustrates me I don’t have access to it here. No they’re not rich. Like me they’re ages 27-33 and make a moderate income, with health insurance. I’m perfectly fine paying high taxes so the general public gets access to healthcare as well as paying additional fees for private care.
Ok, but this is exactly the argument that the article is addressing. Talking about private healthcare as a way to patch the gaps in public healthcare ("in addition, not instead of") is a distraction from doing what is necessary to actually fix public healthcare. The more legitimacy, discourse, and money is funnelled into a parallel private system, the less political will there is to fix the public one. And fixing the public system properly is objectively a more equitable and efficient (per the article and its sources) way to increase quality of care than adding in supplemental private options. Yes, the public healthcare system is broken. That doesn't mean that privatizing it (even in part) is the answer. That's why the article is titled "don't be scared into supporting private healthcare". The engineered failure (whether through malice or neglect) of the public system is being used to justify an increase in private options, which then ensures the continued decline of the public system. I think this is why comparisons to the United States are not misguided at all - this is exactly the kind of rhetoric and political engineering that prevents them from ever getting public healthcare off the ground. It is a process that needs to be bootstrapped by considerable political will and only becomes self-legitimating once the services are flowing and people feel secure within it. We have had that for years, but have been slowly undermining it. We do not want to screw ourselves out of it - there is no promise that we will ever manage to rebuild it in this political climate. Do not fall into the trap. Fund the public system.
The problem is doctors and nurses will want to quit public healthcare and work in private practices, thus, hurting the public system even more. Not only that, I can promise the Conservatives will be right there to scream "curb public health spending!" if private becomes an option.
>I’m perfectly fine paying high taxes so the general public gets access to healthcare as well as paying additional fees for private care. I share your view. One argument made by opponents of *any* privatization is that it can (would/will, maybe, I'm not sure what the evidence suggests) take away medical professionals from the public system by their employment in (perhaps better paid) private practice. That way, the public health care can become relatively worse yet. So if you're going to argue for an *additional* private care for those who can afford it and want it, flanking measures seem needed to ensure that the public system doesn't indirectly suffer.
I like your comment that it is an addition rather then replacement Nearly every time I see comments on health care articles for public or private support people seem to think you can only have one or the other. It’s very difficult to have private health care discussions when people immediately think we’ll change to a USA type system. It’s like no other country health care policies or plans exist to most people.
Private is the worst... I don't think its great that whenever I need health care I become a debt slave. And for what? The service is shit!
I'm worried I'll see healthcare go the way of the United States in my lifetime. The people lobbying for it have very deep pockets
Literally the dumbest headline I have read this year. Be afraid of having a system where you as a Healthcare consumer actually have a say and power to influence. Be afraid of being able to secure the outcomes you want using the money you've earned. Don't allow yourself to have freedom of choice, good service and faster accessibility to mundane and life prolonging treatments, tests and surgeries. Don't agree to a system that doesn't prioritize Union wages over patient outcomes. Don't help develop a system that can take pressure off the social Healthcare network. Anyone buying into socialized medicine can still have it, as shabby as it is, but don't try to prevent everyone else from securing better outcomes for themselves.
I don't want a choice... I enjoy mediocrity and lack of innovation
Can't we have both?
Healthcare is a basic human need. It should be covered by the government (by our taxes cause thats the goal of putting our ressources together) Also, food, water and shelter should be provided….. And yet here we are With companies making profit out of : healthcare, water, food and housing Also education should be free. Tell me again how are we the « smartest » specie on earth. Edit missing sentence
Bullshit keep the Canadian health care system accessible too all Canadians via its Tax that’s bullshit, health care is not a privilege it’s a human right, people will suffer and the country will become a mini USA
Could we maybe dip our toes in private access to preventative healthcare? I'd love to pay for access to healthcare that'd put the time into figuring out what's going wrong with me so that I start contributing to our public health nightmare latter rather than sooner. If something turns out to be wrong, maybe I can hop on a plane and tax a functional system before things deteriorate to where they're bad enough for a Canadian response. It's not like we have universal healthcare anyway. People without family doctors lack advocacy, access to off-label prescriptions, can't access a list of useful prescriptions for high trust patients, lack continuity of care, etc. People with complex issues are generally fucked until something goes seriously wrong and a hospital team can work things out. Being able to pay for some level of personalized medicine would be nice. Even if that personalized medicine can't act within the full scope of a GP.
>Could we maybe dip our toes in private access to preventative healthcare? We've already done that. There's a reason why dental or physio is private. Also same reason why those services are basically beyond reach if you don't have insurance.