Our Health-Care System Needs Urgent Care

Contrary to popular belief, Canada does not have one of the best health-care systems in the world. We need to make changes to the Canada Health Act, stat.

Canadians must embrace the resources locked within the private sector if we are going to have a sustainable health care system. These are the findings of the just-released Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report, which thoroughly debunks the myth that Canada has the best health-care system in the world.

We are careening into a brick wall, where health-care costs are rising at over seven per cent a year while revenues are increasing at only four per cent a year. This is due to our aging population, more expensive technologies, and a shrinking workforce. Baby boomers are retiring, and our reproduction rate of 1.7 children per woman sits well below the rate of 2.1 that is needed to just maintain our population. Health costs continue to exceed resources year in and year out. This translates into hospitals withholding care from sick patients (rationing), previously medically insured services not being covered anymore (de-listing), and additional fees being charged to the patient for services rendered. This has resulted in longer waiting times, medical personnel leaving the profession because they are fed up with being unable to care for their patients, reduced access to care for those in need, and most importantly, people enduring needless pain and suffering while they wait an excessively long time for care. This situation is not going to get better, only worse.

Only one source can provide the extra monies we need to fund our medical needs: the private sector.

In order for this to happen we must get serious about reforming our health system and not tinkering with it. First, the Canada Health Act (CHA) must be modernized to allow patients to pay for care if they wish, in entirely separate facilities funded solely by the private sector. Individuals who go to these centres would be paying for care out of their own pocket or through private insurance they have purchased. By leaving the public system, they will be shortening the queues for those who are waiting. People using private facilities from time to time would also be free to access the public system that their taxes are paying for. Private facilities would act as a release valve and would in effect be subsidizing the public system. Physicians and other medical personnel would work in both systems.

Second, we must put patients back at the centre of our health-care system. In Canada, the sick are seen as a cost to the system. In Europe they are seen as an asset, because hospitals are paid for treating the patient. Therefore we need to change the mechanism by which we fund our hospitals. Instead of giving them a lump sum of money every year to run their institutions, as we now do – a practice that obviously doesn’t take into account the demands hospitals face – hospitals should also receive payment for services rendered.

Seventeen of the top 20 medical systems in the world are in Europe (Canada sits around 26th). They all integrate public and private care, drawing on the strengths of both systems to ensure that patients receive the care they need without being hurt financially. Surely we should look at these systems that provide better care to those in need.

We cannot continue to wrap ourselves in the CHA, hold onto shibboleths, and demonize those who are trying to modernize our obsolete healthcare system. It must be overhauled in order to fulfill its ultimate objective, which is to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of income, will have timely access to the quality care they need when they fall ill and that the length and quality of our lives will be the best it can be. I think Tommy Douglas would approve.