MARK MACDONALD
BRITISH COLUMBIA – There is only one way for BC’s current health care crisis to be solved: Private health care.
Is that ever going to happen under an NDP government? Not a chance. There is absolutely no way that Horgan’s Heroes would ever introduce a solution that would betray Tommy Douglas’ last century introduction of universal health care.
Even if they wanted to, there is not a chance that the public health care unions would support it. They scream blue, bloody murder if anything but the status quo – which is clearly unaffordable and untenable – needs to change. Any time someone any type of user-pay or parallel system that would allow queue jumping for anyone who could or wanted to pay for immediate medical procedures is immediately assailed.
Their first chorus “we don’t want U.S. health care” is stuck on repeat, as if that is the only alternative to the current Canadian model. There are well over 28 countries that have public health systems that are more affordable and effective than what we have in this country. Studies introduced by the Fraser Institute clearly show Canada’s health care costs and effectiveness are near the bottom of national public health efforts across the globe.
Canadians boast of their “free” medicare, particularly to Americans. Even though they forget that our health care is anything but free – its bills are hidden within the multitude of taxes we pay. While we don’t have to produce a credit card to receive treatment at hospitals and clinics, Canada’s health care, at last count, costs a single person around $6,000 per year. If one does the math, that is $500 per month. It is anything but free.
An American business-owning friend shared recently how the costs of health care are rising, and they had to shop around for affordable health care insurance for their employees. They allotted $500 per employee per month for coverage premiums. Hmmmm….that would be $12,000 a year. But that’s what we pay, isn’t it? Can it be?
The difference, however, extends to the delivery of service. There are no lineups in the U.S. for health care if you have insurance. If you don’t, you can take a seat and get in line at clinics. Without a doubt if someone needs health care in the U.S. and does not have insurance, they’re facing astronomical bills for service. At the same time, if someone required health care in Canada and didn’t have a Care Card or government-backed insurance, their bills would be enormous, as well.
When it comes to Canadian health care service, if someone ends up in emergency, care is immediate and excellent, with few exceptions. But the always increasing wait lists for elective surgery, exacerbated by a system overloaded with Covid-related issues the past two years is excruciatingly, glacially slow.
We simply don’t have enough doctors. Thousands of British Columbians are without family doctors, and the NDP government has no plan to fix that crisis. General Practitioners have become the working poor in Canada, veritable slaves to a system that caps their wages and requires them to meet high quotas of patient visits daily just to pay the bills. GP’s are not paid enough.
With what they’re paid and what they face once they get into a practice, why would GP’s want to work within this system as it exists? Plus, one can’t help but notice public sector unions advertising for more workers on radio and television – in the most curious of ways. Most of the ads focus on how underpaid and overworked the workers are. . .the jobs sound downright miserable. If that’s what the jobs are like, who would want to sign up? “Come and join our team: We don’t make enough money and we’re overworked!” Someone needs to either tweak the text, or fire the advertising company that came up with the campaigns.
The public-sector-union-supported NDP has one fix-all solution to every problem – throw more money at it. But that is not the answer as the health care ministry could consume every single dollar of provincial government revenue, leaving nothing for anything else.
Private health care – or a parallel, user-pay system working in tandem or competition with the existing monolith, is the only solution. To the Fraser Institute again: They recently disclosed that 22 of 28 universal health care systems around the world ‘expect patients to share in either the cost of outpatient primary care, outpatient specialist care, or acute inpatient care”. And that 8 of the top 10 top-performing, high-income universal health-care countries have some sort of cost-sharing arrangement – including Australia, new Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland.
This month, the Alberta government accepted bids for a private hip-knee surgical clinic on First Nation land. This is a real glimmer of hope for not only First Nations health and economic prosperity, but a parallel competitive system would boost productivity in public health, even if only out of jealousy.
Two decades ago, Former Deputy Prime Minister Don Mazankowski issued a report titled: “A framework for reform: Report of the Premier’s Advisory Council on Health”, which prescribed, you guessed it, private service delivery and more competition for the existing public system.
The only answer, if we’re ready to hear it, is some form of private health care working in tandem, and in competition to the antiquated, cumbersome, existing public health system.
Mark MacDonald is President of Communication Ink Media & Public Relations Ltd. and Author of the book “It Worked For Them, It Will Work For Me: The 8 Secrets of Small Business I Learned From Successful Friends”, which can be obtained by reaching him through: mark@communicationink.ca
